Freakish Tide/wind On Potomac 5/25/13

[PotomacBassin]

I was wondering if anyone was on the Potomac on this day.  This was the strangest day I've seen on the river in a while.  There was 20-30 mph NW steady winds for two straight days (Fri-Sat) but I never expected this to happen.  We had our tournament and launched around high tide at 6:00 in the morning.  The water was at 2 feet at our launch (normally 5-7 feet at high tide.  Well apparently the wind didn't allow the tide to come back up.  I didn't think the tide would go out again since it was already so low.... but it did.  We fished our shallow areas early because I figured early may be the only time we could fish certain areas... by the end of the day it was all mud in those areas.

 

We fished the same area all day and had a blast.  Caught 13.62... not enough to place (8th) but we were catching quality fish all day long.  

 

At 2:00 we decided to fish another creek but it was way too low and the boats in the marina were all beached.  I had to get on plane coming under a bridge at the deapest point (a no wake zone as well) but it was my only hope.  I then high tailed it out and back to the marina at 2:15.  Weigh in was at 3, but low tide was at 230 and I was worried I wouldn't make it back.  Well I'm sure glad I did.

 

Going back to 2:00... I saw about 3-4 boats beached on our way back to the marina area... once we made it back to the launch/weigh in area, there was about 6 inches of water.  I had to pull my trolling motor up so it was just skimming the top of the water to keep moving and my partner was on the front with me.  Other people didn't fair so well.  One guy was completely beached in the no wake zone by the launch and other people were trolling from outside the barriers the whole way in.  The guy beached finally just put his motor down and floored it... All I could see was a huge mud rooster tail coming out the back and he was barely moving.  Luckily he finally made it back 45 minutes after weigh in.  

 

It was a bizarre day, but a fun day of fishing.  Hard on my boat though... I cracked the top case of my trolling motor and it's in the repair shop now.  Just wondering if anyone else adventured out for this freakish day.

[Sam]

Heard about it yesterday.

 

One of the stranded guys deserved to be stranded.

 

That's all I will say.

 

Glad you got back for the weigh-in.

 

To say the least it was freakish. You don't fool around with Mother Nature.

[BrianinMD]

I was on the river out of Pohick that day, never seen anything like it. Backed the truck up to where the water line was at the front tires and still had 2/3 of the bunk boards out of the water. Had to take the winch strap as far as it would reach to pull the boat onto the trailer. The people there with pleasure boats were having an even worse time.

 

But yeah, the bite was good, great day until the fight to get the boat out of the water.

[PotomacBassin]

Heard about it yesterday.

 

One of the stranded guys deserved to be stranded.

 

That's all I will say.

 

Glad you got back for the weigh-in.

 

To say the least it was freakish. You don't fool around with Mother Nature.

I heard the one guy just drove right up onto the beach when there was probably 2 inches of water over the flat.  People were saying he fished there all the time so they weren't sure why he went in.  It was a great educational day, though.  You were able to see all the structure that we usually fish and even saw a few more spots that we should be hitting up.