Shenandoah River Smallmouth Fishing

   This Sunday, I went to the South fork of the Shenandoah river with a friend and one of my old teachers. We took kayaks and the main plan was to smallmouth fish (I brought a musky rod just in case). We put in at a small park in the town of Elkton, and paddled up about half a mile before we turned around. My first fish of the day was a nice 17" smallmouth, one of my best fish this year (haven't smallmouth fished much), and right after that, I boated a 2 pound largemouth. After that, I caught lots of 10-13" smallmouth and eventually the fish shut down. We could see the fish suspending in the slow moving water next to cover, and they clearly were not active, I couldn't count all of the 2 and 3 pound smallmouth that were right under my boat! There was also a 4 pound largemouth that followed me around for quite some time, watching me. The only area I was doing well in was the swift water below riffles and rapids, I was just drifting a 4" senko, and that was how I caught the last 5 fish of the day, including a nice 16"er. I ended up catching 15 smallmouth and one largemouth, which is a pretty solid day in my opinion, but apparently we should have landed 50 fish a piece. I will definitely be trying to get back to the Shenandoah this year, there are a lot of very nice fish in the stretch we fished, and I want to figure them out! Thanks for reading!

 

First fish @17"

 

2nd decent fish @16"