ShawnLittle  05/02/2006 - 10:54  Trip Reports  Loch Raven   

After a month of planning the 1st annual Pocket Aces "fishing" tournament was held this past sunday at Loch Raven Reservoir. Six members of our Wednesday night pool team met at Loch Raven this sunday to hold a tournament. 3 Random teams were drawn and to keep it fair an opposing team member was placed on your boat to weigh the fish that were caught. The fish had to be at least 12 inches of length and were weighed, written down on paper, and released. Your top 5 heaviest fish counted towards your total. Five members had a beautiful and awesome day out on the water. Unfortunately the sixth member, which was me, celebrated at a birthday party a little too much the night before and I definitely felt the effects the next day. Nothing worse than having a hangover with very little sleep and getting sea sick on a boat in the morning into the afternoon. Especially when the fish were cooperating like you wouldn't believe. I managed to pull in 5 lbs and 14 oz for my team before I was unable to fish anymore. My boat partner, Matt, who was on another team also went to the same birthday party the night before but did not suffer any effects of the lack of sleep or alcohol. Matt took advantage of basically being the only person on our boat fishing and had a banner day. He pulled the biggest fish caught out of the group as he boated a 5.1 lb largemouth bass (pic included) and I believe 14 other nice fish on the day. I couldn't tell you too much about the winning total on the day because I was just in poor, poor shape by the time the tournament ended. I do know that a technicality led to the team with the most weight not winning. One of rules stated that you had to be back on shore by 3:00 p.m. or it was a 1lb penalty for each minute you arrived late. My boat came in 6 minutes late so Matt's team recieved a 6lb penalty and my team recieved a 6lb penalty. Due to me being unable to fish most of the day my team wasn't in the running anyway but Matt's team took a hit and consequently finished in second because of the penalty. Overall, it apparently was an amazing day on the water for people who were fishing because a lot of quality fish were being caught and I am upset that I missed most of it. It definitely would have been a very close tournament had I been able to keep my head in the tournament. I would put the total countable fish for the tournament in the 50's with plenty of stories of the ones that got away to go around. Looking forward to the second annual Pocket Aces tournament next year.

muskalungee  04/24/2006 - 19:44  Fishing  Loch Raven   

Shawn Little with a real nice Loch Raven Largemouth. See the trip details Here

ShawnLittle  04/24/2006 - 17:09  Trip Reports  Loch Raven   

The title of this report pays homage to a great artist, Johnny Cash, as well as a new secret technique that was shown to my two fishing partners and then passed onto me this weekend. This technique helped produce a record day on Loch Raven Reservoir this past Sunday. A new boat record (for Loch Raven) was set yesterday as we landed 41 fish on the day. I don't have a numbers breakdown fish wise but numerous largemouth bass and pickerel were caught as well as an appearance by a bluegill.

muskalungee  04/12/2006 - 15:17  Fishing  Loch Raven   
Shawn with largest pickerel to date....see entire story here:
http://www.mdfishing.org/node/view/664

muskalungee  04/12/2006 - 15:14  Fishing  Loch Raven   
Shawn with his 3.3 lb largemouth....see entire story here:
http://www.mdfishing.org/node/view/664

ShawnLittle  04/11/2006 - 08:54  Loch Raven   

Went out this past sunday to my favorite impoundment in Maryland otherwise known as Loch Raven Reservoir. Started out from the fishing center at 6:10 a.m. with the temperature at 34 degrees with a little wind keeping it cold all day. I'm thinking with the rain and temperatue drop from the night before fishing deep and slow will have to be the plan. I'm figuring no fish until at least the sun comes up over the trees and starts warming the water around 9:30 or so and according to last years fishing log that I keep that was exactly what happened last year at this time.

Apparently I have a lot to learn about bass behavior because around 6:45 my buddy, Doug, locks into a 2.5 pound largemouth on a crankbait near the shore. What the heck! I think this must be some kind of insane fish because it was really cold outside and the water wasn't much warmer. My other buddy, Pat, has on a crankbait and he's getting followers and one fish on and lost, but still very active fish. We head into a cove that was slightly protected by the wind and Doug proceeds to throw a spinnerbait on at a tree that is in two feet of water and BAM another largemouth locks onto his spinner and he lands a pounder largemouth.

I'm thinking what is this? Early summer pattern? I of course don't waste anytime and my rods are now loaded with crankbaits and spinnerbaits. We fish later on into the day without much success when we start fishing a little deeper letting the wind blow us down a bank when Doug locks onto a 2.9 pound largemouth with yet another crankbait. This time the fish hit a little deeper but still it was on a crankbait. I had no idea crankbaits would work in post front conditions.

Noon approaches and I still have no fish and I'm pretty much giving up because I have 6 hours of fishing in and not one fish, nibble, or even a follower at this point. I try another crankbait out, cast it way out there and much to my suprise FISH ON. I fight it a little bit and then the fish stops fighting and I figure the way it feels it's just a small fish. Either the fish was extremely tired or I had him hooked weird but he was just waterskiing on top of the water while I'm reeling him in. The fish gets closer to the boat and I realize he's not that small after all. It's in fact a 3.3 lb largemouth fish that we get in the boat, get the pictures, weigh him, and let him go. I'm ecstatic that I caught a fish but a little bummed because there wasn't that much of a fight. But hey, I'm on the board with a nice fish. About a half hour later, same crankbait, waayyyyyy out there I get another fish and this one is heavy and putting up a fight. I must of been fishing in some deep water because he took off and dove deep, put up a nasty fight, but in the end was no match for my rod and reel. I finally pull the fish onto the surface and into the boat and it was the biggest pickerel that I've caught in my life. We snap pictures and because the fish was extremely spent from the long fight I had to get him back into the water before we could put the tape measure onto him. I know at least he was over 24", my buddies think he was closer to "30 but I'll settle for 27". I might have to do a reenactment and try and measure based on the pictures. All I know is he was big and he was thick. I was pumped after not catching a thing all day and now I had two fish within a hour. The day ended without anymore fish caught but I believe we found another spot to fish so it wasn't too bad of day at all.

ShawnLittle  05/13/2005 - 09:03  Loch Raven    Went out with a friend (Pat) who hasn't been fishing in over a year to my favorite place this time of year: Loch Raven Resovoir. As usual the place was a tad windy, but we were on the fish anyway. My friend picked up like he had been fishing everyday this year, he landed 21 fish (though 2 of them were bluegill which he insists counts just as much as any other fish). Decent fish, nothing to brag about most of his fish were 15" pickerel but he did get 2 of the biggest crappie I have ever seen in back to back casts. (Pictures forthcoming) He also got an excellent largemouth which was nice to see since it seemed like everytime he got a fish it was a pickerel. I believe his total was 2 bluegill, 2 crappie, 12 pickerel, 5 largemouth. All of his fish were caught on the same friggin spinnerbait. He never tied another lure. He lost a couple of them but had enough backups to keep fishing with them. I got a paltry 13 fish as my total but for some reason I was getting more largemouth than pickerel as I got 9 Largemouth and 4 pickerel. (Picture of my largest fish forthcoming.) Now for the drama............. We rented a trolling motor from the fishing center and everything was fine until about 2:00 when I happened to notice the motor sputtering. Uh Oh, I know the signs of an engine about to quit, I've been driving junkers since I was 16 so I feel that I'm pretty much an expert on the signs of a dying motor. I tell my friend Pat the problem and suggests we should start heading back towards the fishing center that way if it does die than we don't have far to row. I say that would be great but it just sputtered out on us and we're not going anywhere. He takes a look at the motor, gives it a shot on top of the motor and it starts up like nothing was ever wrong. I was like awesome and being that we were tearing up I suggested we keep fishing but fish our way back to the center. Well, that little tap on the engine lasted about 3 minutes cause the motor started sputtering again. At this point he was the captain and he was saying we should start heading back. I agreed because we were really far away from the fishing center and it was a long way to row. So we proceed on out of the cove and that's when we realized....Man we are in trouble. The wind was pushing us backwards because our sputtering motor wasn't giving us enough thrust to head into it. Pat started smashing the top of the motor with an oar and it would start up again, then a minute later it would die, then he would smash it again and the motor would die about 45 seconds later, then he smashed it again and then the motor lasted 30 seconds and so on. After about 45 minutes we made it a 100 yards and I would say that the fishing center is at least a mile away probably more. Not a chance we could row against the wind and make it, we were going to be stranded on an island. Well, we decide that we'll give a the fishing center a call and see if we can get a tow back into shore because they have the only motorboat allowed on the resovoir. Sure enough we call them, they ask us where we are and said they'll be out in 5 minutes. 5 minutes later, a guy comes out in a motorboat asks if we could do him a favor and undo the trolling motor. Pat unhooks the trolling motor from the boat and gives it to the guy and then to my amazement the guy gives us back a fresh trolling motor and after he makes sure it works he drives away. Of course what do we do, we tie our lures back on and hit the next available cove to catch more fish. This year it seems like I've had this run of luck on the resovoir, I'm hoping it stops there because it is getting that time of year where I launch the canoe into Monocacy and I def. do not want any drama while I'm in a canoe on a river........