Labor Day comes each year with mixed emotions. It marks the end of summer, summer vacations are over, summer hours at the office are over, the kids go back to school, work seems to get more serious, the traffic on rt50 through Easton lightens which I greatly welcome, the Canada geese start to tickle in their annual winter migration and as importantly it marks some cooling weather and schooling, breaking fish throughout the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. And in the fishing reports this week we see just that, breaking keeper stripers, nice sized bluefish and nice catches of Spanish mackerel from the upper reaches of the Chesapeake in and around the Chesapeake Bay Bridge all the way down to Point No Point.
(pictured: fellow Tidal Fisher Marium with some nice keeper stripers caught out of Sandy Point State Park this past week. Check out spynet000’s full fishing report with pictures here )
Maryland Fisheries News
This week marked the beginning of the new crabbing regulations where commercial crabbers have limits on the amount of female crabs they can keep. Eventually later in the season no female crabs will be allowed to be kept. Recreational crabbers have not been allowed to keep female crabs this entire season and the restriction continues on recreational crabbers the rest of the season.
In other news, the ASMFC has a new panel that is going to look into the “Ecological Management of Menhaden”. More on that in my Lateral Line Blog here if you are interested.
In Striped Bass news a new report came out that suggests that the striped bass population along the east coast are healthy. Many anglers, including myself, question if there are as many big stripers along the coast as there used to be. You can read more on this here and make your own convulsion after reading the report.
In one last piece of news it appears that the dead zones, or red tides as they are sometimes called, that appear in the Chesapeake in the hot summer months are not just isolated occurrences, in fact it appears that that dead zones are spreading and expanding through out all the oceans of the world. Check out a map and more on this here .
Weekend/Upcoming Fishing Events
Deale Captains Association’s 1st Annual Fishing tournament
Date: September 6-7, 2008
Details: The first annual fishing tournament out of Deale, MD. $8,000 in prize money.
Full details here
Flyfest VII
When: September 6, 2008
Where: North of Solomons Island on the Patuxent River
Details: This event spawned out of fly fishing angler son Tidal Fish. The event is in its seventh year and attracts anglers of all skill levels. There will be fly tying, fly casting lessons and plenty of fly fishing talk. Admission is free and all are welcomed.
Full details here
Maryland Fishing Reports
Upper Chesapeake Bay Region (Susquehanna River/Flats to Bay Bridge Waters)
Striped Bass fishing has been a bit slow in and around the Susquehanna Flats area down the Poole’s Island area. However, a few reports came in from those fishing below the Conowingo Dam that they have been catching nice fish in the early morning and evening. But, most of the stripers have been concentrated in the lower upper bay area in and around the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Live lining seems to be the method of choice for anglers fishing in and around the Bay Bridge area. The pilings of the bay bridge have been holding good numbers of and keeper stripers. The sewer pipe on the eastern shore side has also been a good area as well the the drop off at the mouth of the Chesapeake at Love Point. Anglers have been finding spot at Podickory Point, Hackett’s bar and at the mouth of the Chester River.
Mid Chesapeake Bay Region (Bay Bridge to Honga River Waters)
Breaking striped bass, nice sized bluefish, and Spanish mackerel have been daily happenings from Thomas Point Light all the way down to Cove Point area by the Gas Docks. There have even been some keeper flounder being reported this past week. Many of the striped bass have been schoolie sub-legal size, but there have been a nice mix of keeper fish up to 23 inches in the mix. Plenty of good sized blue fish are mixed in and lots of Spanish mackerel. Most anglers are catching the striped bass and bluefish from casting small bucktails or plastics. If you want to target the Spanish mackerel the key has been a fast troll using clark spoons.
Fellow Tidal Fisher Jason Noriris posted the below report from out of the Solomon’s area:
Went out this morning in the supposed to be 5 k nne wind was more like 10-15 ne. Was running over to HI when we saw Birds and breaking fish at cedar point. Picked up some nice blues and some under size rock around 17 inches. Chartuese king called said he was hammering the mac south of HI. Quick ride over and we imediatly picked up a mac. Kept picking up blues while kyle was picking up macs. He was catching all on a # 3 planner deep. I thought I had a #3 but didn’t have it on the boat. Ended up loosing one more mac and catching another. All in total we caught 3 mac’s,10 blues,8 rocks. & was back in time for lunch. Have not been fishing since my son was born 3 weeks ago so wanted to get back and help my wife with little man..
Fellow Tidal Fisher Phillk999 had a banner day catching over nine different species in and around Popular Island. His report :
Today, I wanted to target 2 different species I have not caught on my boat, Spanish Macs and Flounder. I found a crew of Ed (Whiskey99), Pat and Frank, who were willing to make the long run south and we headed out at 5:30 AM with Spanish Macs being up first and Poplar Island being the destination. The weatherman was a little off with the winds over the 5-10 predicted and they were going straight down the bay, it was a little rougher than I hoped for, but we toughed it out.
We got down that way and saw a couple boats trolling just west of Poplar Island, joined them and caught a couple blues. South we saw birds a working and a lot of boat traffic. And rather than steer clear as usual of the mess, I joined the fray.
For the most part, I kept my head on a swivel trying to stay out of everyone else’s way, let my buddies work the rods, kept my patience with all of the boaters and different tactics trying to get their share of the fast moving school. I had several people do some very bizarre things and my one buddy said I had the patience of a saint. But within minutes, I had a person, who I think was in a Parker, call me an a$$hole on the VHF and the worse part was he was right.
I had just trolled over a school of blues, tried to double back for a second shot, and got caught in a bad situation. I had a charter at 9 o’clock on my port trolling in the same direction I was heading for the school, who would not give way for me to turn left to avoid the fleet trolling at me from 2 o’clock on my right. I thought about making a sharp right, but I had LTJ boats there, so I could not turn that way either and I thought slowing down was not a good option either. Unfortunately for the gentleman in the Parker, I decided to speed up faster than I was going originally and cut him and the charter boat off to get out of there. I am sorry about that if you are a Tidalfish member and I do apologize.
I should not have put my self there in the first place, but we all have brain farts and I had a stinky one there. I do apologize, but I did not know what else to do.
After that encounter, I decided that crowd was not worth the effort and I headed off to try and troll around the far outside of the fray and stay the hell out of trouble.
The best part was this worked out well for us, we caught two Spanish Macs well outside the mayhem, one almost 23”, and caught some very nice bluefish and one throw back rockfish.
Once the tide stopped moving, the fishing died off, so we started trolling north, changed lures to more traditional rockfish lures and slowed down, waiting on the tide to start moving for the second part of our act today. While trolling just north of the mouth of Eastern Bay, we hit another school of rock and nice size blues, spent a few passes there with the fish to our selves, before we packed up and headed for a ledge on the western shore where we planned on using bluefish bellies to catch some flounder.
About 2 O’clock we headed for a ledge I heard was holding flounder, rigged up a couple rods with flounder rigs, cut up some bluefish for bait and tried for flounder along a 12-34 foot ledge. We barely had a moving tide but managed 1 throwback, 1 19” and 1 18” flounder. In addition to the flounder, we caught 1 spot, several flounder and 2 keeper hardhead. About 4:15 we packed it up after a long day and headed back up the bay. That gave us a 6 species day with keepers in 4, flounder, blue, Spanish Mac and hardhead. I will post the pictures tomorrow.
Captain Walleye Pete Daulberg of Four Seasons Guide Service reports that he has been spending all his time concentrating on the western shore. He has been mainly fishing from Parker Creek south to Cedar Point and looking for breaking fish.
Lower Maryland Chesapeake Bay (Honga River down to the Maryland /Virginia Line Waters)
Mike and Christy from Buzz’s Marina in Ridge buzzed in a report this week and said fishing has been steady for stripers, big croaker, bluefish, Spanish mackerel and the red-fishing (aka red drum). Hot areas for croaker have been buoy 72 and Corn Field Harbor.
The Wilson bridge reef has continued to hold striped bass, but the key there is 1) current- making sure you have plenty of it, 2) vertical jigging- you need to drop your jig straight down and give it the vertical jigging action. Any bucktail, jigging spoon, or soft plastic will do the trick in the 6 inch range. Dropping straight down is the trick.
Tidal Fish Wetz fished down in the Point Lookout area this past week and reported:
Left my dad’s ramp and headed out the creek, found small blues breaking half way to Pt No Pt light played with them for a while then headed north and found small pods of rock breaking. Nothing keeper size so we headed to Pt Lookout cause my wife wanted to jig up a flounder and had never tried it before. We got inside and started jigging with a pink stand up jig with a lime green twin tail trailer tipped with squid and hooked up on some small ones every drift. The wife starts yelling get the net and she got her first flounder on a jig, 20″ I got a couple more smalls and finally got a 18″ for our limit. Bay was flat calm so we ran over to 72 Es edge and caught nice size blues on topwater till dark.
Ocean City Maryland Offshore Fishing Reports
Ocean City Fishing Center reported:
AUGUST 30, 2008 :Catch of the Day…..Bluefin Tuna. We had quite a few boats out today and they were catching Bluefin Tuna most averaging around 56” in size. They also came in with Dolphin and Yellowfin Tuna. Some of the guys brought to the dock Wahoo as well.
AUGUST 29, 2008: The Bluefin fishing has picked up once again and the Marlin bite is still on. Capt. Luke Blume on the “Press Time” came in with a really nice Bluefin Tuna and they released a White Marlin. Capt. Ed Kaufman aboard the “Jade II” brought to the dock 2 Bluefin Tuna, and 2 Yellowfin Tuna. Capt. Will Zimmerman on the “Playmate” came in with 1 Bluefin Tuna and 1 Dolphin. Capt. Dave Wentling aboard the “Instigator” had a great catch. They came in with 1 Wahoo, 1 Bluefin Tuna and 2 Dolphin. Capt. George Merrick on the “Ursula Priscilla” had a half day inshore trip and they released 2 Atlantic Sharpnose Sharks and came home with Mackerel. Fishing is still good through October. This time of year is great to come down to O.C., no traffic and fewer boats out competing for the big one. Give us a call to book a fishing excursion you will never forget.
AUGUST 25, 2008 : Summer must be coming to an end, but fishing is still going strong. Only a few boats fished today. Capt. Luke Blume aboard the “Press Time” came in with a nice 100 pound Bluefin Tuna and released 2 additional Bluefins. They also caught 40 Dolphin. Capt. Dave Wentling on the “Instigator” brought to the dock one Bluefin Tuna weighing in at 102 pounds, 15 Dolphin and released 6 small Yellowfin Tuna.
Sue Foster from Oyster Bay Tackle and Fenwick Tackle reported:
Fishing this week saw lots of small flounder with a few really nice flounder mixed in. Croaker were running in Ocean City, but they weren’t real big. Big rays were reported in the bay along with some good bluefish catches.
Ocean City Inlet early in the morning and again after dark have been
producing some stripers on live spot, live eels, and dark colored Swimming Shad lures. Bluefish and shad have been biting in the inlet with spec rigs.
Stripers, shad and blues have been biting from the Rt. 50 at night though many of the stripers are short. Anglers are using Swimming Shad lures, spec rigs, Gotcha Plugs, and other soft bodies with lead heads.
J.J. from the Oceanic Pier reports a very good flounder bite this week with several decent keepers caught. Some croaker were biting. Anglers also caught spot, big sea robins and little sea bass. Bluefish were running periodically during the day. At night, bluefish and shad were biting good. There were some big trout caught late at night. Anglers use Gotcha Plugs and Spec Rigs at night for the blues, trout, and shad. Shad especially bite good on Sibiki rigs.
Delaware Fishing Reports
Delaware Bay saw croaker in numbers. Surf was good on sharks and rays, some snapper blues, and a few kingfish, spot, and croaker. Some flounder were reported from the surf. Offshore saw better flounder and slightly better sea bass action.
At Oyster Bay Tackle and Fenwick Tackle they only weighed in two flounder this past week but heard of many more. John Swarthout was fishing with Bernie Seigart when he hung into a 3 pound 5 oz flounder he caught from the Thorofare on a live spot on Saturday.
That’s it for this week. Remember to post reports and check for reports on a daily basis from other Tidal Fishers on the Maryland Chesapeake Message Board, there are so many Striped Bass Fishing Reports it’s hard even keeping up.
Until next week, good times,and good fishing!
Brandon, Chief Angler
The winter Virginia striper fishery has been nothing less then spectacular over the last several years. Catch and release anglers need not worry too much about the regulations other then to understand that you may not target striped bass beyond the 3 mile limit in the ocean. If on the other hand you are going to keep some stripers for the table you need to know the regulations for the two striped bass fisheries in Virginia: The one stripedbass fishery is in the Chesapeake Bay and then a seperate one with seperate regulations along the coast in the Atlantic Ocean. Each striper fishery has different regulations and it’s important to understand and know the rules when fishing in Virginia waters.
I am pleased to announce that I had the honor of assisting with the processing of a new Pending IGFA All Tackle World Record Darwin’s Slimehead. This is one of the strangest looking fish I have ever seen. The official weight at Long Bay Pointe Bait and Tackle is a whopping 7lb 8oz. This more than doubles the weight of some recent catches, under 4 pounds. The angler is Ron Vankirk of Williamsburg, VA. He was fishing in the Norfolk Canyon aboard the recreational vessel the “Crystal Clear D” skippered by Sean Doran of South Miles, NC.
The Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer fun for lots of folks, but not if you are an angler on the Mid Atlantic coast! The summer species are preparing to migrate out of the area, and the fall residents are making their debut, so choosing which fish to target is can be tough. Most are choosing cobia and flounder as they both group in the lower bay, making very easy targets. As soon as the winds subside, expect this trend to be back on track.
by Jerry Thrash From Patriot Charters and Queens Creek Outfitters
River Herring in Trouble
