The whole thing is too big; you can only fish small sections of it at a time.

Less than ideal conditions with a storm moving in, but visited the confluence of the Monocacy and the Potomac this morning. Earned the zero after about four hours of fishing. The strategy was simply to cover water, swinging streamers. And I did that. In a less than ideal way in retrospect. Learned today that having particular features–riffles, pools, channels, etc.–allows me to easily work a specific piece of water. After a while of standing in flat, featureless water a quarter- to half-mile wide for an hour, my technique was probably just as likely to foul-hook a fish as to induce a strike.

The primary goals were to (a) hook up with smallmouth (b) work on casting – specifically, bending the rod down into the cork and paying attention to loop formation. On the latter, I realized that choking down on the handle allows the rod to bend more. Seems obvious in hindsight; odd that I never read that anywhere. I also need to pare back on the size of my streamers. There was no real reason to fish a size 4 Clouser Minnow other than that was the size I tied them. A size 8 or 10 would suffice.

The stretch of the Potomac there at the confluence is relatively featureless. 3 – 4 foot gravel bottom flats extend about 50-100 ft from shore and make it highly wade-able. That said, I am not eager to try the area again soon, or at least not during the mornings, when the water is the coolest. I would expect that fishing at last light would have the fish much more active.

I found a different place north of Point of Rocks that I liked much better. The rain had come in by then and the weather was absolutely lousy, plus it was later in the day & I had other things to do back home. The water was full of features: runs, riffles, seams, the works. I snagged often on a floating line and weighted streamers; I suspect that unweighted streamers on an Intermediate sink tip is just the ticket for the area. I plan to go back on an afternoon sometime when the water is above 70’F.