Unusually low tide today on the Potomac today

[steveb1]

Took the family camping at Pohick Bay State Park this weekend. Went fishing yesterday and did pretty well. But this morning we went out about 8:00 am and the water level was way down. Didn't realize it at the time, but I just barely managed to get the boat into the water.  I thought that with the water as low as it was, that this had to be low tide, and it would rise a little by the time I was finished. Wrong!

Fished for about 3 hours. Fishing was miserable. Cold and windy.  Decided I'd had enough and went back to the launch and found I couldn't get the boat to the ramp! Water had dropped another foot. Stuck in the mud about 20 feet out. I've never seen the water level this low. While I was sitting in the boat, some other boaters where on the dock, that had showed up to launch and found out they couldn't. We were talking and they also had never seen it this low. I guess we had hit optimal low tide and in addition there had been a steady NW 20mph wind all night that had pushed all the water out. One guy mentioned that Leesylvania launch was closed due to low water.

Turns out that the side of the ramp I was at was a little shallower than the other side, so I pushed the boat out of the mud and tried the other side and just managed to get in close enough to get it on the trailer.  Another little snag occurred at this point. One of the concrete sections of the ramp bed under water was missing and my trailer tire went into the hole. Again, I got very lucky, and just managed to drag the boat and trailer out of the hole.

On my way out,  another boater arrived with a large boat and was debating on trying to put in where I had just come out from. His boat had to be at least 25 ft cabin cruiser. I went over and told him about the hole on the ramp bed, and strongly recommended that he NOT put in.  He ignored my advice and tried anyway. Sure enough he got stuck.

[Sam]

Interesting story.

Glad all worked out well and you and family are safe and boat and trailer are not damaged.

I would not have thought that the Potomac would get that low but the wind must have helped push a lot of water out of the river along with the low tide.

Thanks for sharing. 

[Bigs]

This isnt good. Im supposed to be goin back out tommorow out of leesylvania and the place Im fishing is only two or three feet deep at high tide to begin with.

[egolfer]

Fished Saturday and Sunday out of Leesylvania. They never closed the ramp, but the River was the lowest I have seen in 15 years of fishing it. We pretty much spent 2 days finding areas out of the wind. Those areas were packed on Saturday with boats, but Sunday there 2 trailers in the lot when we launched and 1 left when we returned. Low tide was 10:41am on Sunday, but it was already at the lowest point when we launched at 6am. The tide never came in, not one inch at all.  The factors were the wind out of the west on Sat and west-northwest on Sunday pushing the water out of the river, plus the new moon.  New moon means less tide movement, slower current, and less tide range.  But the fishing was good!!

[Bigs]

I guess Im gonna have to go and see for myself how its lookin out there in a few.

[RockvilleMDAngler]

I launched Sunday at 10:00 from Hope Springs at Aquia and it was REALLY low! I heard guys saying that the wind was too strong and that they hadn't gotten a bite etc. but we tried the mouth of the creek anyway and quickly realized it was a bad idea since the wind was unmerciful. We carefully navigated to the back of the creek where we found deeper water and caught a ton of fish along pad edges (most of the pads were completely out of the water) and standing timber. Caught at least 20 fish but nothing on poppers/spinnerbaits/chatterbaits, they only wanted the texas rig. Biggest was this 4-10 spawned out female on a texas rigged speed craw:

Putting the boat back on the trailer was very difficult but we were able to get it on by getting out feet wet.

Once the wind dies down a bit the water will come back up (if it hasn't already) but exploring with such low water was a VERY informative experience.

[NewAngler]

Mark, I thought I saw you and your boat on route 1 on sunday morning. After you launch from Hope Springs, where did you go on the river?

[RockvilleMDAngler]

We stayed in Aquia and went way back into the no wake zone.

[Dan:]

there was no high tide at Solomons or Annapolis today either. Very strange.

[c17Lat]

Tide was crazy low today! I got stuck at one point...in my KAYAK!

[leo215]

depending on wind direction/speed, it can push the water right out of the rivers lowering the tide.  hopefully it's just the wind.