Did someone mention spoonplugging as in Buck Perry spoonplugging? Used to do that in Alabama several decades ago. It is a trolling technique primarily. It got so hot during the day we would troll for a few hours. There are five sizes in a "kit". Spoonplugging is nothing you are necessarily going to be instantly successful with. It is all about controlling the depth and speed of your lure and putting it, and keeping it in the fish zone. You take the small plug and you see how much line you have to let out at 3 mph for it to hit at ten feet, and you mark your line, and at 15 and at 20, and at 5 mph. You spend quite a while putting together data on what it takes to put whatever size plug you want at whatever depth you want, at whatever speed you want, on what weight line, and you will have different colored marks on your line for different depths, but you will run out of magic markers well before you have covered all the places on your line you want to mark, so you will use dots, and you better make sure you write all this down, other wise you just have line with marks on it. Now, I'm going to save you a great deal of pain if you decide to do this. From the very first day you go at this, for each line weight you want to use, you have a master spool, and every day you go out fishing you "collect" data, you go home and transfer that data, your marks, to your master spools. You will snag, and you will lose lures and you will break line and when you break your line...your marks mean nothing. You have to have a master spool for each line weight you use. You will develop some system with spools and old reels for transferring data back and forth from master line to daily use line. You will go through a lot of line. If I was doing it today, I would use 60 lb braid and a measured leader. That would save you a bundle in cash and time. Make sure the line you use will be around for a while. After a few years you will know exactly how to place the number three spoon at 17 feet at 2 mph, and that is great if the fish are holding at or near that depth! You still have to find the fish, first, and then figure out what size and what speed. It's just like anything else, but when you figure it out, you can catch a lot of fish. Fortunately, I learned from someone who had been doing this for years and had done all this, because I personally would not have had the where-with-all to manage all the crap, but we caught a lot of fish doing this. I don't see you doing this in Mattawoman in April, more like Washington Channel in August. We primarily did this in deep lakes like Eufaula. You will learn a lot about what's going on down there. When I did this, they only had flashers, not the depth finders like we have today, no pictures, just blips. So, it was a way to learn what was on the bottom. I'm having a hard time seeing spoonplugging on the Potomac as a first choice solution, though I have caught a lot of bass trolling the middle Potomac in the middle of the summer. Hey Sean!
