The Potomac River

The Potomac River provides a wide range of activities along its path. In its higher reaches, there is rafting, hiking, fishing and exploring. As the river makes its way across Maryland, recreational activities vary, with kayaking, canoeing and fishing becoming more popular as the waterway widens and the current slows to safe levels.

The Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin has been working to enhance and protect the Potomac River and its tributaries through regional and interstate partnerships since 1940. River and Trail Outfitters has been guiding trips since 1972, annually outfitting more than 30,000 people on various rivers in the Potomac watershed.

The Potomac River Ramble, sponsored by the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin and led by River & Trail Outfitters, is an annual, multi-day canoe and kayak trip featuring riverside camping, catered meals, restoration projects, history talks, nature walks and environmental education.

The Potomac has outstanding fisheries for wild freshwater trout, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, blue catfish and striped bass.

The upper Potomac River is known for its smallmouth bass fishery. This region of the Potomac river extends approximately 250 miles thru Maryland.

Largemouth bass, considered the most popular gamefish in the United States are found along much of the Maryland portion of the Potomac from freshwater to brackish areas. The tidal Potomac River has been proclaimed by many experts as "the finest tidal largemouth bass fishery in the world."

Blue catfish are the largest of the catfish family in North America, sometimes reaching weights in excess of 100 pounds. Increasing numbers of trophy blue catfish are being caught by anglers in the tidal Potomac River.

Striped bass (rockfish) are found from spring thru early winter in the lower Potomac River. Anglers cast, jig or troll as schools of fish move up and down the river to feed.

American shad were once plentiful in the Potomac River but the species all but disappeared from the waterway by the 1950s. In 1980, Maryland shad harvests fell to a record low of 25,000 pounds and the state placed a moratorium on shad harvests in the Chesapeake Bay.

The Potomac River American Shad Restoration Project includes efforts by federal, state, regional and local agencies and nonprofit groups to open historic spawning and nursery habitat for native and anadromous fishes in the Potomac River.

Since the project began, adult American shad populations have increased dramatically. Young-of-the-year shad have also become substantially more numerous, setting records in both Maryland and USFWS/ICPRB monitoring surveys.

The Chesapeake Bay Watershed is the largest estuary in North America, covering more than 400,000 acres of land and thousands of miles of open bay, rivers and streams.

Important rivers that converge in the Chesapeake Bay are the Susquehanna, Severn, Potomac, Choptank and James Rivers.

New research suggests that the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. is showing multiple benefits from restoration efforts. Reduced nutrients and improved water clarity have increased the abundance and diversity of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in the Potomac, according to direct measurements taken during the 18-year field study.

Since 1990, the area covered by SAV in the lower Potomac has doubled, the area covered by native SAV has increased ten-fold, the diversity of plant species has increased, and the proportion of exotic species to native species has declined as nutrients have declined, according to the study by the U.S. Geological Survey and England's National Oceanography Centre (NOC).

More than a dozen species of SAV co-exist in this reach of the Potomac that was almost barren in a 1978-1981 USGS study. SAV are critical to the ecosystem in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. They provide oxygen, food, and shelter so that invertebrates, fish, crabs and waterfowl can survive. High nutrient levels stimulate algal blooms in the water, decrease water clarity, and block light needed for SAV growth.

The study was supported by USGS National Research Program; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore; the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government's Aquatic Plant Management Program; and the Fisheries Division of the District of Columbia Department of Health.

Ron Lewis of Point of Rocks, Md. was fishing in the tidal Potomac River near Fort Washington on Sunday March 23, 2008 when he hooked and landed a new state record blue catfish. Weighing in at an impressive 67.1 pounds and measuring 51 inches long, with a girth of 34.5 inches.

Photo credit: Rose Wills

The Northern snakehead is a species of invasive fish that has taken hold in the Potomac River. Snakeheads have been documented from Great Falls downstream almost to the Chesapeake Bay. Snakeheads are reported to be abundant in several tidal tributaries of the Potomac River including Little Hunting Creek, Dogue Creek, Pohick Creek, Occoquan River, Neabsco Creek, Quantico Creek, and Aquia Creek.