MARCH 15, 2012

After a nearly non-existent winter, Washington this week hatched a new season… “spummer.” Doesn’t feel like spring, but isn’t quite summer. Not in my memory has such a torrid spell of weather settled over the region in early March. Daffodils and forsythia bake in the 80 degree sunshine and people no doubt are pawing through closets and storage bins looking for shorts and tee-shirts.

At Fletcher’s Cove, we are just about ready to launch our fleet of fishing rowboats. All the boats need now is a legal D.C. registration sticker, and then to be slid into the water when the tide is generous enough to allow it. Last season’s repeated flooding and siltation makes getting boats into and out of the river a difficult proposition. Our dock has been repaired and re-set in place after the battering it took last year; we will hope for a little more kindness from Mother Nature in 2012.

The spring fish are showing up now as the water has warmed quickly with the unseasonable weather. The river is low and clear. White perch were caught last week and hickory shad plus a few stripers made their appearance earlier this week. In what might be an “earliest-ever” event, Alex Binsted caught a “beat-the-crowd” American shad today.

It is time to dust off your tackle, get your permit, and come down to the Nation’s River.

Dan