Chesapeake Light Tackle

Tuesday was easily the best evening of my four fishing trips over the past six days. We had a flood incoming in the early afternoon, then kept outgoing current for over 5 hours past the predicted low. Outgoing has been the ticket in the area. Found some fish in the old haunts and also some new locations, all in shallow water, never over 20′ and usually 8-12′ Tuesday, it was keeper’s and up every cast, but Wednesday and Thursday we could only find little stripers with some snapper blues in the mix. There are more blues every day and there is a *lot* of bait in the area.

My fishing partners for two out of the three nights were Mitch and Rob. Mitch is my brother-in-law, an organic chemist from Michigan State, and he brought along a colleague. Mitch fished with me last summer, but Rob had never caught a fish before in his life. It didn’t take him long to learn.  He jigged up a mid-20 inch rockfish on his third cast.  We had a very nice evening filled with many fish.  The sunset pictures aren’t posed with fish out of the cooler, it’s when we caught the fish.  Everything we caught was released.

I also got to fish with my friend Brian and his son Blake Wednesday night. We had plenty of pullage, both topwater and jigging, but had a hard time finding quality fish. Blake is a better fisherman than his dad already, yuk yuk. I

t’s great to see another generation of light tackle guys coming on the scene. We’d given up on breakers and started throwing topwater to structure with only a little luck. Fortunately, we got a much appreciated call from Dave, a fellow I fished with last week,  that put us on some fish.

Thursday evening Mitch, Rob, and I headed back down to the south of Kent Island.  We could only find small fish, but there was plenty to be caught.  We finished the evening with a quick run across the dish calm bay to Annapolis by way of Thomas Point Light.  We tied up the boat at City Dock and enjoyed shellfish and cold drinks at McGarveys.

Today I got out about 5:30 to jig the bridge pilings.  I had a good outgoing tide and caught as many 20 inch plus fish as I wanted.  I found fish from one side of the bridge to the other and also caught them at both rock piles.  With such a good bite, it didn’t make sense to stay long on the pilings that were holding smaller fish.  I kept moving in hopes of finding bigger ones, but I couldn’t find anything over 27 inches.  Nevertheless, a fun evening.  I kept a fish for dinner.  We had rockfish glazed with honey and soy sauce.  Delicious!