Four Mile Run

Four Mile Run is classic snakehead water — a tidal creek where these fish tuck into whatever cover they can find and ambush from the shadows. Look for them holding tight to pads, matted grass, and laydown wood along the banks, especially in the skinnier backwaters where the current slows and the sun warms the shallows. Snakehead here don't roam much until they're pushed to, so working the edges of cover methodically pays off more than covering open water.

Because this is tidal, with Bellevue, D.C. the nearest reference station about 1.8 miles off, tide stage matters as much as time of day. High tide floods the grass and pads, scattering baitfish and giving snakehead more ambush lanes tucked shallow. As the water starts to drop, though, that falling tide concentrates fish and forage back toward defined channels and creek mouths — that ebb is when the bite really turns on, so plan to be fishing the last couple hours of the drop.

Access here is easy either way you fish it. Bank guys have parking mapped as close as roughly 0.11 mi from the water, while paddlers and small boats have a ramp practically on top of the water, about 0.02 mi away — about as convenient as it gets for launching a kayak or jon boat.

Bring gear built for punching cover: 40-65 lb braid, weedless topwater frogs and buzzbaits worked over the pads, chatterbaits for a little flash and vibration, and weedless soft plastics for probing wood and grass edges.