>>483239When I fish started fishing Mallows a year ago my usual big jig spinners produced nothing. It wasn't until I downsized to beetle spin that I had any luck. First catch there was a channel cat. They can be very predatory. When I was up in PA some guys mentioned they were having luck catching channel cat in the river using white Mr. Twister plastics.
Hopefully you don't have them to deal with but if you're fishing the Potomac or by some chance you have blue cat near you they can be caught jigging grubs like I mentioned above (
>>481576 ). Pic related took a watermelon/red flake grub. Cast out, let it hit bottom and, before I could turn the reel and make the first bounce, it was hooked.
>>484626Pic (
>>481561 ) related. In-line spinners are popular for trout but I've never been a big fan of them. A swivel is almost mandatory to deter line-twist and that means more knots and more points for potential failure. Not that the likelihood of failure is particularly high if you tie everything well and make sure your line hasn't frayed somewhere or has nicks in it. Still I prefer to keep it simple. All the trout I've ever caught were on jig spinners of various size. I tie the line to a duo-lock snap, snap on a jig spinner with whatever blade color I want to use, and pop a jig-head + plastic onto the spinner. I think the smallest snaps I have (size 0) are good to around 30 pounds and jig-spinner forms are made of a thicker gauge wire than the snaps so they're not going to fail. The only real place for failure is the knot tied to the snap.
>>484941I lipped a pickerel once. A small one, thankfully. It still didn't pan out well.
