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I fish often in the Severn throughout the entire year. Most of my trips involve trolling for stripers or casting to shallow shoreline spots for perch or pickerel. I anticipate I will finish 2016 having fished at least 75 days on the Severn and its tributaries. I have done this for the past few years. Gradually I can see seasonal patterns that hold true from year-to-year. Of course, each year brings a few new twists too.
White perch move into the shallow shoreline habitats in early to mid May each year. Once there, they are usually easy to find and catch. Those summer residents begin to move out of the shallows during October as they move to deeper water. Pickerel live in the same areas as the perch do. During the summer, I catch relatively few pickerel, in part because natural food is plentiful and because the perch are more active, grabbing the lures as they pass by.
This time of year (mid-Oct) is a transitional time. The numbers of perch I catch is dropping, and the number of pickerel starts to pick up. This morning I got my Severn Slam (striper, perch, and pickerel) -- my first in a while. After launching, I found quite a few birds diving on bait and small stripers in the main river between the bridges. I trolled around the edges of the birds and caught about 15 dink stripers. The wind and waves made paddling in the main river challenging and wet. I spent an hour each in two tributaries casting small lures to the shoreline. The perch were interested in my Bignose spinner. I caught about 5 of them, then put that rod away. I began tossing a Gulp twister tail on 1/8-oz jighead hoping to find a few pickerel. I ended up with 8 pickerel, but they were all in one small section of the second tributary I visited. I expected to find them in many other spots too, but cannot complain about the total catch.
My casting experience this morning is right on schedule for the seasonal transition. I found a few perch and a few pickerel. In another two to three weeks, the same amount of effort is likely to produced few or no perch and a steady pickerel bite. One downside of the seasonal transition is that soon we will need to contend with floating leaves that stick on the hook points and make the lures uninteresting to the fish. I dealt with that in one of the tributaries today. As more leaves fall and get blown into floating rafts on the river, it will create trolling problems too.
White perch move into the shallow shoreline habitats in early to mid May each year. Once there, they are usually easy to find and catch. Those summer residents begin to move out of the shallows during October as they move to deeper water. Pickerel live in the same areas as the perch do. During the summer, I catch relatively few pickerel, in part because natural food is plentiful and because the perch are more active, grabbing the lures as they pass by.
This time of year (mid-Oct) is a transitional time. The numbers of perch I catch is dropping, and the number of pickerel starts to pick up. This morning I got my Severn Slam (striper, perch, and pickerel) -- my first in a while. After launching, I found quite a few birds diving on bait and small stripers in the main river between the bridges. I trolled around the edges of the birds and caught about 15 dink stripers. The wind and waves made paddling in the main river challenging and wet. I spent an hour each in two tributaries casting small lures to the shoreline. The perch were interested in my Bignose spinner. I caught about 5 of them, then put that rod away. I began tossing a Gulp twister tail on 1/8-oz jighead hoping to find a few pickerel. I ended up with 8 pickerel, but they were all in one small section of the second tributary I visited. I expected to find them in many other spots too, but cannot complain about the total catch.
My casting experience this morning is right on schedule for the seasonal transition. I found a few perch and a few pickerel. In another two to three weeks, the same amount of effort is likely to produced few or no perch and a steady pickerel bite. One downside of the seasonal transition is that soon we will need to contend with floating leaves that stick on the hook points and make the lures uninteresting to the fish. I dealt with that in one of the tributaries today. As more leaves fall and get blown into floating rafts on the river, it will create trolling problems too.
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