Most fishermen do their best to keep up with creel limits, size restrictions, slot ranges, and gear limitations. It’s often very complicated to follow specific regulations, but true sportsmen pride themselves on knowing exactly how they can legally fish and what kinds of fish they are allowed to keep. It’s especially important to know the rules this time of year, since many species are spawning. That’s why it’s so surprising that one of the most prized and delicious fish in the Chesapeake Bay is completely unrestricted – no limits, no size restrictions, and no rules as to how they can be caught.

This past weekend I had the good fortune to fish for crappie with light tackle/fly-fishing guide Kevin Josenhans in the tidal Pocamoke River near Snow Hill, Maryland.  As fishing guides go, Captain Kevin is nothing short of Chesapeake royalty. He’s been fishing the Bay for over 40 years. In addition to guiding for the past 20 years, he’s spent three decades working for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources including time as a ranger at Janes Island State Park.  He knows the lower Maryland Chesapeake region like the back of his hand.  His successful late summer speckled trout trips in the Tangier Sound are legendary.  I’ve wanted to get out with him for one of those Tangier trips for several years, but I was surprised last week when my buddy Mark invited me along on a trip he had planned with Captain Kevin for crappie and chain pickerel. I jumped at the opportunity. Read More!

It’s not that hard, right?  You just open your mouth, close your eyes, and throw it back.  At least that’s how a lot of people eat oysters.  I wonder if they really like them, or just the idea of eating them?  I consider myself something of an oysterholic.  There’s only so long I can go without eating some.  I like them just about every way you can prepare them, but especially raw.  I have several friends who are also oysterholics. Since our problem is more than we can handle, we’ve developed a twelve-step-program.  Thank goodness they sell oysters by the dozen!

I remember the first oyster I ever tried.  It was spring break of my freshman year in college.  I visited a friend who lived on a boat along the Florida coast.  We were broke and hungry so he showed me how to wade out and catch oysters from the Apalachicola Bay. We shucked them with a screwdriver and ate them on the spot. They were delicious. I’ve since refined my techniques for finding and eating oysters, but I’ll never forget the first time. Read More!

“One last drift,” I called up. My son was casting from the bow while I piloted the boat. It was getting dark and we had New Year’s Eve dinner plans in Annapolis, so we had to go. The better fish were holding in a warm water pyconocline; a spot no bigger than a pickup truck bed, 40-feet deep. I pointed the bow of my 27 Judge CC into the swift current and idled us into a position just downstream from the rocky corner.  Daniel compensated for the strong flow and launched his hotrodded chartreuse BKD toward an imaginary spot 20-yards upstream from where he wanted his lure to touch the bottom. In water this swift, he’d be lucky if his jig bumped the rocks three times before it drifted downstream out of the strike zone.  A successful cast either caught a fish, or brought up a clump of the brown bryzoan moss that covers the bottom. The only other option was to hang up. He brought his elbows together beneath the low-profile baitcaster and followed the arc of his line with his extra-fast rod tip as he anticipated the slight bump that would tell him his lure had touched the rocks.

Bump. There it was. A quick snap of the wrist picked the jig back up before it had time to snag on the bottom. Again, he followed the line with his rod tip and waited for the bump as the lure fell. Watching the drop. Anticipating. Any moment now. Slam!  Daniel set the hook and fought another 24-inch football-shaped striper to the side of the boat.  That made seventeen in 90 minutes – a fun evening of catch & release fishing very close to home. Read More!

December brings my favorite day of the year. A day I look forward to so much that I can’t sleep. When that joyful morning arrives, I’m usually up before dawn, caught up in the magic of this time of year. If you’re like me, I know you’re looking forward to it too, and you’ve probably guessed that I’m not speaking of the joy of Christmas morning. The most wonderful time of the year for me and most of my light tackle friends is the opening of catch & release season. It started last week in the Maryland waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

Gone are the fair-weather boaters with their blaring boom boxes. No more trollers claiming quarter-mile planer board right-of-ways, or obnoxious VHF broadcasters insulting everyone within 50 miles.  Catch & release season is the time of year when the one-man-one-rod concept reigns supreme.  It’s when you can run on-plane for miles in the wide-open Bay and never see another fishing boat.  A time when there’s very little competition for prime fishing spots, and a small but tight fraternity of hard-core fishermen brave the elements to jig the cold-weather hotspots.  Now that I think about it, it’s better than Christmas!

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I’ve just spent an extra long, extra fun weekend at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel (CBBT). Connecting the Delmarva Peninsula with Norfolk and Virginia Beach, the CBBT is 23 miles of high-current structure that is prime habitat for striped bass. Rich Jenkins and I trailered my Judge 27 center console Thunder Road down Rt 13 to Cape Charles late last Friday.  My son Daniel and my brother-in-law Mitch flew into Norfolk to meet us. We had a great time and found some fine fishing.

In Decembers past I’ve stayed at hotels in the Kiptopeke area but this time I decided to look into renting a vacation home for our four night stay.  After calling and emailing several places, I settled on a house in historic Cape Charles called “Southern Comfort on the Bay.”  A recently remodeled Victorian with three bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen, game room, washer and dryer and a driveway large enough to park my boat in, it was the perfect base for our five days of fishing.  It’s very nice to come off the water and have a roomy place to kick back, dry our clothes, watch football, play cards, and enjoy good food and drink. Better still was the price.  I’ve paid more for a single hotel room. Read More!

Thanks to everyone who made it to the re-creation of the Annapolis chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) at the Boatyard Bar & Grill last night. There was a big turnout and we had a lot of fun. As I was driving to the meeting, I considered the concept of re-creating something as significant as a major chapter in a national conservation group.  It’s obviously an important event, so I decided to collect my thoughts on the concept of re-creating.  I looked up the word recreation and found that it simply means to create something anew.  I suppose almost everyone who reads this website considers themselves recreational fishermen.  The time we spend on and around the water helps us wind down and relax. So by fishing, we’re essentially restoring ourselves to a state-of-mind that makes it easier to face the daily challenges life throws our way. Read More!