Sunday, June 27, 2010

Upper bay coming to life












This may and June in the part of the upper bay that I usually fish has been basically typical, Not much fish, Didn't even mark much on the fish finder until recently. Usually you can still find good fishing in the rivers for Large mouth bass and perch, but the main stem of the bay was pretty much barren unless you travel farther south. Love pt. has always been a favorite place at this time of year, but I can rarely make the 30 mile rountrip by boat, so its a waiting game for me. You never really know how the years fishing will be. most fish school up and theres no telling where they will be, but it looks like its going to be another good year of fishing. The bait fish have started schooling in good numbers and Jigging for White perch is getting really good with a lot of big ones in the 12" range. this is really one of my favorite times of the year because the perch are so plentiful and put up a nice fight on ultra light tackle, plus they are my favorite to eat. I've also been getting some nice size Channel cats on jigs, they can put up a great fight, I think much better then a Rockfish of similar size. The Catfish pictured above hit a 1 oz crippled herring, I always mistake them for Rays at first because they stay low in the water and move around a lot, the only difference is that they don't peel drag as long. I also caught a keeper size croaker near hart/miller island, the first keeper size croaker I've caught this far up the bay since back in the 1990s when we would find big schools of horse croaker from 15-18". But I would probably catch more if I used bait instead of lures..Actually when I caught this Croaker I put a squid gulp on my Hopkins spoon out of curiosity, and he hit it right away.

There's also plenty of small Rockfish around, I haven't caught any keeper sized ones in a while, but thats normal for this time of year also, It shouldn't be much longer before they show up for all this bait in the water, you never know in nature though, the early heat wave this year has the bay temps up to 82*, there's a lot of dead fish floating around which isn't unusual when the bay gets this warm. And from most the the reports I've read the Stripers are mostly in the lower and middle bay, I can't see them moving very much until the water cools a little..but who really knows? not me