We interrupt this hurricane blog to bring you a fishing report.  Yes, this IS a website dedicated to light tackle fishing, and on most Sunday evenings, that’s what I do.  I spent most of the day singing the lumberjack song with chainsaw in hand, cutting up the trees and limbs that fell in our yard.  After seeing all the trees down around Kent Island today, I’m surprised that we didn’t have more damage than we did.  We are also fortunate that the only complete tree that was uprooted in our yard fell harmlessly instead of taking out our picket fence or part of the church next door.  We worked on the house and yard most of the afternoon, finishing about 5:00 PM.  That left just enough time to go fishing.

I launched Thunder Road at Matapeake and ran north to the Bay Bridge.  Winds were about 12 knots out of the west when I started, but came down to near zero as the evening wore on.  The water was stained, but not as much as I expected.  Water temperature and air temperature were exactly the same at 76 degrees. That’s significant because the water has been well into the 80s.  It means there was a lot of top-to-bottom mixing due to the storm. I did expect the fish to be freaked out and hunkered down, and they were.  I gave the Bay Bridge a good shot, but only caught one little rockfish.  I thought the fish might be deep, so I started my fishing trip looking for more of a winter pattern.  I marked a few fish deep, but I couldn’t get them to bite.  I moved to the shallow pilings and there wasn’t anything going on there either.  Read More!

The Bay Bridge is now closed due to sustained winds of 62 miles-per-hour and gusts from 72 to 80 miles-per hour.  That was at 7:30 PM and the wind continues to build. We’ve lost a few big limbs from trees around the house, and we can hear trees coming down back behind our fence and around the neighborhood.  The power has blinked a few times, but has fortunately stayed on.  The center of the storm is now back over water and looks to be directly between Cape Henry and Cape May at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay moving north toward Ocean City, Maryland.  That’s still well to our south, so we have lots more to come.

Despite the conditions, I couldn’t resist a hike around the area to watch the storm.  It was quite an adventure. I visited Matapeake Pier and the beach at Terrapin Nature Area.  Winds were sustained at 50 knots while I was out.  I was surprised to see the Bay so rough even though this side of the island is protected from the northeast winds. I’m sure things look a lot more dramatic on the western shore.  There is no storm surge at this time. I’m feeling a lot better about that since winds are now pushing water out of the Bay instead of in.  I shot a few minutes of video while I was out.  For some reason it doesn’t want to embed, so click here or on the photo if you can’t see it:  Hurricane Irene, Kent Island, Maryland

Mmm, July on Kent Island: when the water is savory and smooth and salted with all manner of boats, when tourists flock to the Eastern Shore beaches and bridge traffic backs up for miles while drivers peek over the rail for a glimpse of the sparkling spectacle that is summertime on the Chesapeake Bay.  Summer can be both sweet and sour to Chesapeake fishermen. Sometimes we wonder if it’s worth trying to fish in this Hell’s Kitchen of boats, everyone jockeying for the single best position from which to make the sweetest cast.  But fish we must, so we line up like line cooks to join the fray, vowing to stay even-tempered when inevitable conflicts arise and deluding ourselves that, when we get there, we’ll have that delicious “top-secret” spot all to ourselves.  Mmm, mmm, summertime, sweet summertime. Read More!

Okay, so this entry might be a little heavy on the fireworks and light on the rockfish.  That’s because I’m not too good at fishing in crowds, so I spent most of last weekend doing chores around the house.  That’s not to say I didn’t get some time in on the water.  In fact, I don’t think I missed a day, but most of my time on Thunder Road was spent cruising to fireworks shows around Kent Island.  Since this is a fishing website, I’ll start with a catching report.  I met Rich at Sandy Point State Park Friday afternoon for a few minutes of piling picking onboard his 19′ Sea Hunt center console.  There was very little wind but plenty of boat wakes, so we took our time getting to the our fishing spots. We had a ripping outgoing current so we rigged up soft plastic lures on three-quarter ounce jig heads.  I was throwing a hotrodded white 6″ BKD and Rich had on some kind of chartreuse lure I didn’t recognize. I think we caught keeper size stripers on our first four casts, so we could have had a 5-minute limit.  We stayed with it for two and a half hours and released 27 keepers with plenty of shorts.  We caught on both the east and west sides of the bridge, even sneaking in downstream of some bored-looking live-liners who didn’t seem to share our amusement when we pulled nice fish right out from under the pilings where they were anchored.  Read More!

Have you heard?  Light tackle casting is producing big fish lately on the Chesapeake Bay.  Some lucky anglers are catching fish over 30-inches on almost every trip. Sometimes they get three or four. Most of the fish I’m catching are coming off cover like rocks or bridge pilings, but some have been hooked while fishing submerged structure in open water.  Both soft plastics and metal jigs are producing. If you’ve been out, I hope you’re enjoying some lucky days.  30-inch plus stripers in late June is something to celebrate, especially considering how tough fishing has been previously.

In my opinion, seasoned anglers make a lot of their own luck. Since the fish are more inclined to bite now, I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss tips for hooking and landing bigger fish – just some little things that can move fishermen up from the usual summer schoolies to true summer trophies.  You probably have a few tips as well, so feel free to share them in the comments section.  I’ll start with the basics: Read More!

I recently found some old pictures of myself in diapers, standing beside a small wooden boat parked in front of a Tennessee farmhouse. Towering above me was my father, and at my bare feet was a nice stringer of fat largemouth bass.  Did I catch them?  Probably not, but like any good fisherman, I’ll happily take the credit.  I might even tell you a tall tale about how – at the ripe old age of two – I tricked them into biting a lure that I hand carved from a boar’s tusk with a Bowie knife, and how they pulled harder than a Smoky Mountain mule.

There’s no doubt that I owe much of what I know about fishing to my father.  There’s nothing better than fishing with family.  All three of my sons have become first-class fishermen. This week I’ve been fishing with my family’s next generation of anglers.  I’ve had a great time on the water with my son Daniel and my granddaughter Ella. I’m happy to report that Chesapeake Bay salinity levels are finally climbing back toward normal levels (see chart below), although they’re still low.  Since conditions are stablizing, striped bass fishing is getting a little more reliable.  That isn’t to say some days aren’t better than others, but we’re at the point where I at least think we can count on a few fish on any given outing.

Read More!