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!

No man, after catching a big fish, goes home through an alley. – Ancient Chinese Proverb

Maybe you’ve heard someone recite another old saying about “the three stages of a fisherman’s life.”  It goes something like this:  The first stage is when the angler’s main objective is to catch as many fish as possible, the second stage is when the angler only searches for the larger fish, and the third and final stage is when size doesn’t matter and the capture is unimportant, but satisfaction comes from the way the angler tricks the fish. I usually nod my head in agreement when I hear that, but c’mon now, I don’t know one single fisherman who, when given a choice, doesn’t cast toward the biggest fish in the pond.  We can wax poetic about the joys of baptizing ourselves in the boundless beauty of nature, and we can sing the praises of that peaceful solitude we find out on the open water, but screw it – the bottom line is, no matter how we are fishing, we want to catch a whopper!  In this third and final segment of the Gimme a Breaker series, we’re looking at ways to get the lunkers out of surface blitzing Chesapeake rockfish.   Read More!

Have you been to the mouth of Eastern Bay looking for breakers lately?  Find any? It will eventually get better, but so far they’ve been few and far between. If you think there are fewer breaking rockfish in the Chesapeake Bay this summer, you’re right.  I believe it’s due to several factors including low salinity and less bait, but I’m afraid the primary reason is because there are fewer fish.  The rockfish we normally see blitzing in the summer months are either juveniles too young to migrate up the coast, or residents that for whatever reason decide to stay in the Chesapeake year round. It’s not hard to figure out why there are so few resident fish this year. All it takes is a glance back to last February’s news reports when our Natural Resource Police pulled tons and tons of dead fish out of illegal gill nets.  No one can say for sure how many illegal fish leave Maryland. It’s very possible that over a hundred thousand pounds of resident fish are stolen every winter from the Chesapeake Bay.  Is it any surprise that the fish aren’t where they’ve always been this summer? It’s extremely frustrating, but since you’re probably here for a fishing report, let’s talk about how to find the few schools of breaking fish we have left.  In this entry I’ll begin a series of tips for finding blitzing rockfish and bluefish in the Chesapeake.  Read More!

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!

Don’t tell me the moon is shining

The full moon that occurs closest to the autumn equinox (the first day of Fall) is called the Harvest Moon.  It gets the nickname because there is bright moonlight from before sunset to almost sunrise so there is plenty of nighttime light for activities such as gathering crops.  It’s also one of the best moons for fishing the Chesapeake Bay.  I pay very close attention to the phases of the moon.  Not only do they tell me a lot about water levels and the intensity of expected currents, they also provide information about fish behavior.  Striped bass feed at night.  While you aren’t likely to see younger Chesapeake stripers blitzing under the full moon, the big girls are usually on the prowl beneath bright night skies.  I like to fish after dark during the spring and fall.  By now you’ve likely read my recent reports about the great shallow-water action we’ve had this year.  Nothing gets my blood boiling like nice fish blowing up on top-water plugs in less than a foot of water.  For the past month or so shallow-water stripers have been extremely active in the late afternoon hours.  The shore-side feeding frenzy usually begins around 5:00 PM and builds to a crescendo before turning off just after sunset.  Things pick back up just before sunrise and continue until the day gets bright. This week, thanks to the full harvest moon, all bets are off.  As you can see in the video, the shallow bite is wide open though both daylight and dark. Read More!

As the old saying goes, if we caught fish every time we went out, they’d call it catching instead of fishing.  So, I guess my Friday evening/Saturday morning over-nighter to southern Maryland was a fishing trip, because there wasn’t a lot of catching involved.  Striper fishing has been pretty good around the Bay Bridge and Poplar Island this week.  We’ve been landing our share of mid-20 inch rockfish on light tackle with an occasional 30 incher mixed in, but I was hoping for more of a challenge.  Friday afternoon, I launched out of Shipping Creek and pointed Thunder Road south though Poplar Narrows, past Sharp’s Island Light, around the Jame’s Island Horn and down past Hooperstown to the area just north of the Virginia Line that has been producing big red drum. It’s a 60 mile run – two hours in perfect conditions – but it took me a little longer.  One reason is because I crossed the Bay for a visit with Mike at Buzz’s Marina, another reason is because I hit a pound net, but my biggest challenge was the wind. Here’s the story. Read More!