Chesapeake Light Tackle

Rich joined me for an exploratory trip to the mid-Bay Sunday evening. We launched Crockett’s Reel off Kent Island, passed on some small blitzing fish in the Eastern Bay, cut through Poplar Narrows, and started fishing just north of Sharps Island Light. It was dish calm so we could see anything that moved on the surface. There was lots of bait, plenty of young gulls skimming rain minnows, and some isolated pods of very large bunker. We found several schools of breakers consisting of small blues and dink rockfish.  As we moved farther south, we caught heavier blues but we had a tough time finding anything any size with stripes.  We need 2-4 inch menhaden (peanut bunker), but I haven’t seen too many since spring. Hopefully there are some in the rivers but bait that size has been rare this year.

Here’s a couple of pictures.  One of bait beneath the surface, and another of Rich holding up a big menhaden.  Some of the bluefish we’ve been catching aren’t as big as those bunker.

We kept running south finding more and more bait, but not much action.  The water is amazingly clear now so it was easy to see the baitfish beneath the surface.   We stopped by one of our favorite cold weather spots just to see if anything was going on.  We caught some small rock and bluefish, but the big surprise came when I set the hook into what felt like a decent fish.  I called out to Rich that I felt headshakes, but I never expected to see a 26 and a half inch spotted sea trout come up.

Trout have very soft mouths and I don’t carry a net, so I had to get out on the swim platform, reach under his belly and  scoop him up.  It was a beautiful fish, easily qualifying for a Maryland DNR Citation.  I’ve caught numerous specks down in the Gulf of Mexico, but at over seven pounds, this is my personal best and the biggest one I’ve ever seen from the Bay.  It also had the biggest fangs I’ve ever seen on a fish!

Before sunset we ran back north finding a few schools of breaking blues and caught some 3-4 pounders on topwater.  Rich landed a keeper rockfish, but that was it for the night. It was a beautiful evening on the water, so the running around was at least enjoyable.  I’m sure we could’ve set up on some of the early breakers and caught more fish, but there wasn’t much point since they were all small.  I think we found out what we needed to know. If you’ve followed my reports from last fall, you know what I mean.  Water temperature is 67 degrees and we had decent incoming current.  I’m hoping to get in some explorations above the bridge later this week.