County #18: Washington County

May 26th, Memorial Day Weekend The plan: wake up at 4 am, eat a quick breakfast and get on the road. My destination is Greenbrier State Park in Washington County just about two hours from home. Put the kayak on the water and catch a few fish as part of “Fish Across Maryland” and then head back home.

Reality: I woke up at 4 am, ate a quick breakfast and drove up to Greenbrier State Park. It took exactly two hours. But as I write this I am sitting in a line of cars waiting to get into the park because it doesn’t open until 7:30. While waiting I also was paid a visit by a park ranger who informed me that the water level of the lake itself has been drawn down for ongoing repairs to the dam. I guess I’ll have to wait and see how “Fish Across Maryland” goes for the day.

Reflecting on the day: To say that I was worried about my attempt would be honest. I have fished another lake that was drained down for dam repairs and had no luck. This was not the case for today. As I paddled out of the little finger from the launch I saw loads of underwater vegetation, so I figured that was a good sign. There were some areas of sandy bottom between patches of grass and if I looked closely I could see fish swim over them. I made it out to deeper water and made a few casts along the grass edges. My trusty tube jig would fall nicely in a spiral. On one cast the spiral seemed to stop and gave it a yank. There it was my first fish of the day and first fish in Washington County: a nice 9 & 1/2 inch black crappie. Landed, photographed and released, any other fish for the day were bonus!

I spent a little more than two hours paddling around the edge of the lake. Occasionally I’d see or hear some splashing along the shore and I figured the largemouth were getting breakfast. I’d make casts near those spots, if I was within range, trying to entice something to bite. I was lucky to get hooked up on a few occasions but pleasantly surprised to see that I was caching bass. I was catching “sunfish.” (By the way any FishNerd knows that the largemouth bass is a member of the sunfish family, but here I’m talking about a different species.) To be completely honest I think these “sunfish”were redbreast sunfish; and they were beautiful! The orange and yellow on their anal fins and tails were so bright. It really made them stand out. I ended up catching three or four of them along with a half dozen black crappie. The small “Crappie Magic” swimbait by Luck E Strike paid off with most of the catches today. I even landed a nice largemouth using it and missed on a couple of others. After the two or so hours in the kayak, I decided I’d head back to the launch. In total I think I caught about a dozen fish. Maybe not the biggest day of fishing, numbers wise, but it was a very fun morning.

With respects to the plan the moral of the story: Know before you go! I really don’t have anyone to blame but myself. Looking back I found “Tweets” from the Greenbrier State Park that the water level was going to be down all summer. It is Memorial Day weekend and state parks in Maryland are ALWAYS very busy this weekend and every other weekend during the summer. Nonetheless at least I have a story to SHOW and TELL! Until next time... Tight Lines!

Upon hearing from the Maryland DNR and the fishing department - the sunfish that I caught were "green sunfish." I had caught them before in another location, but it's always nice to catch something different.