Spotted sea trout don’t frequent our neck of the Bay, so you want to get out there when they do
I was wade-fishing off Thomas Point Park when the fish hit my Clouser fly. Casting the weighted streamer around a boulder-strewn area in about four feet of water, I felt the take, and right away I knew it was not a rockfish.
Was this year’s good news because of — or in spite of — our fishery practices?
The Young of Year Survey for striped bass spawning success in the Chesapeake Bay for 2011 is a whopping 34.6, the fourth highest on record since the Department of Natural Resources began this statistical measurement 58 years ago. Since our resident rockfish population has declined by approximately 30 percent over the last decade, this is great news indeed.
How to get your fair share when fish and birds are feeding
It had started as a brisk, calm morning, but the fish weren’t in the shallows where I had hoped to find them. After a futile hour, I followed Plan B to the Bay Bridge to find only little guys there. I was calling it a day and heading in when I saw a wisp of smoke to the north.
When conditions are rough, the catch is all the sweeter
The 20-knot northerly wind was supposed to have laid down by dawn. Of course it didn’t. Mike and I nonetheless launched at first light and, despite the snotty weather, were soon anchored off one of the western-side Bay Bridge supports and tossing chunks of weighted soft crab back into the structure.
My skiff was rocking and rolling, but we were determined. Our battle plan had morphed into simply getting four legal stripers as quickly as possible, then heading home.
The tide was beginning to briskly move out as I lowered the hydraulic spike on my shallow-water anchor. Positioned a dozen or so yards off a long, heavy rock jetty in four feet of water, my skiff came to an abrupt stop, then swung about with the current. The light was already getting low in an overcast early evening gloom.
The past two weeks have been frustrating. Constant marine forecasts for morning rain and thunderstorms have been followed by calm, balmy mornings with lovely overcasts that have not only been rain-free but ideal for working the edges of the Bay for marauding rockfish.
Today I put on long pants for the first time since last June. Normally this is not entirely a bad thing because chilly fall weather means that bigger rockfish will be in the shallow water I love to fish. But not right now. Around our neck of the woods the fishing is pretty much on hold, and it may take some time before it returns to normal.
When the fish bite, you gotta be there to catch them
First came Irene, then seven straight days of even greater deluge from Tropical Storm Lee. With so much forced inactivity, I was on the brink of angling despair. When the forecast suggested our first day of precipitation-free weather, I loaded my skiff.
Arriving at the ramp and launching at first light, I had no misconceptions about my chances. All the Bay’s tributaries had been swollen in flood stage for days.
With the editor’s husband on board, there was no leaving till I got him a fish
It was pitch dark when the last fish finally hit. Bill said, “Got him.” Then, even from my station in the stern, I could hear his drag sounding like a large, angry bumblebee. Line poured out of his reel as the rockfish swam hot and straight for the middle of the Bay.
Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?
It was the day before Irene was due to arrive, and though I should have been home cleaning out the rain gutters, gathering supplies and checking the generator, I wasn’t. Friend George Yu, who has as little common sense as I do about these things, had met me at 5am, and instead of making hurricane preparations we were skimming down the Chesapeake over the calm, pre-storm waters in my small skiff.
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