Finally got into some nice fish

In the last month I,ve been catching mostly small fish and a few keepers now and then, but its been slower then usual at this time of year because the indian summer just didn,t want to end, and the drought. but the fishing was pretty good on this day (oct.29,07). I got through the cut about 4pm and it didn,t take long until I saw working birds, I caught stripers for a while then the birds left, I searched for a little while and found the fish in about 17'/18' of water and started catching them again. I caught about 30 fish with about half keeper size with the biggest at 32", I was mostly jigging with a Tidalsfish lures with a finess trailer and a hopkins shorty. I headed in before sunset and did some topwater around back river for a few minutes and caught two more that were about 18" but I didn,t measure them.

Natures fireworks

I agree with the old saying "Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after." H.D. Thoreau

I like catching fish, but for me, catching has never mattered all that much. I like the hunt more then the kill. Figuring out where the fish are, Is like a chess match or a cross word puzzle.

Also just watching nature (in general) has always been the most enjoyable part for me.

I have hundreds of wildlife and nature pics. and they are the ones I continue to look at over and over, not the fish pics (well, not as much).

Last thursday 9/20/07 is a good example, I didn,t do very good fishing, I only caught a few bluefish, white perch and small rock, But the sunset reminded me of the reason I was really out there.
Im sure I will be looking over these pics for years to come..If im still alive ofcoarse.

fishing starting to heat up

This is the time of the year that I like in the upperbay. the Rockfish start to school on the edges of droppoffs and you can catch plenty of fish with almost any type of lure. some of my favorite lures are the ones that can be jigged close to the bottom, stingsilvers, hopkins, krocodiles, diamond jigs, gotchas,deadly dicks, and soft plastics (when the bluefish aren,t around)like Bassasasins, sassy shads, and finesse lures on leadhead jigs. Actually any lure that is properly used will catch a Striper when they are aggressively feeding. There was a time in the past where I caught so many Rockfish on a bucktail while they were in a feeding frenzy that they wore off the hairs of the bucktail and I still continued to catch them on the bare hook! It hasn,t got like that in my area yet, but hopefully September, october and november will get like that again this year.
only time will tell...
The White perch fishing has been really good, but its nice to see the Fall Rockfishing kicking in again

Revisiting my youth by Kayak

Last year I made a goal to catch as many different species of fish in the Upper Chesapeake that I could, Some of the fish that I put on the list I planned on catching in a creek near my home that I fished often as a child. I figured that it would be a good place to fish on windy days when I couldn,t take my boat out. Plus I just wanted to fish there one more time. Me and some of the other kids would hike through the woods and fish Moores run (AKA the run). Part of these woods were once a dumping ground until the early 70s when the government bought the land to build I95 and its remained undeveloped ever since. the thing I always loved about the area was that it was basically an area rich with wildlife in the Baltimore area, And most people don,t even know it exists. You could hike through the woods and fish the creek all day and never see another person. I actually continued to fish there from time to time into my 20s, I would take my nephew Kenny when he was young, I thought it was a good place to help mentor him and show him that there was another life besides the suburban life.
I decided that I would once again hike through the woods and fish the creek, but when I got to the woods, I realized there were no trails anymore. I asked some of the neighborhood kids if there were any trails leading to the creek, and they didn,t even know there was a creek back there. I guess its just todays computer generation. It actually became a small obsession, I had to get to that creek again. It took almost a year to figure out a game plan (I do have other things in my life), but I eventually found an area of the creek that I could get to, it was to shallow to fish, but I thought it was deep enough where I could get my inflatable Kayak in and ride it down stream to where that creek and another creek comes together and gets deeper. So on sunday 6-25-07 I awoke and planned to take my boat out on the bay, but instead I decided that this would be the day for my Kayak adventure. I got out the list of things I needed for the trip that I made earlier, packed everything so I could carry it all for the fairly long hike, and I was out the door at 5am. I took the short walk down my street, and was hiking through the woods in no time. When I finally got to the creek it was still dark, so I hooked my battery operated air pump to my Yak and started filling it up. While it was filling up I jumped down to the streams bank and looked down stream and noticed a beaver dam a distance away, passed the dam it was way to shallow for the yak. So I had no choice but to put plan #2 in to motion, I had to carry everything an extra 2 miles through the woods to where the two creeks meet and becomes Moores run. the Kayak was half full, so I just put it across my shoulders and grabbed my other belongings and started on my way. after a while I heard a sound of breaking branches, I looked over and saw a large deer running through the creek and crashing into the brush on the other side of the creek. cool! one of the reasons I made this trip was to see if there were any deer in these woods, I saw tracks that looked like deer on my earlier explorations, but I,ve never heard of deer around these parts.
I eventually got to the creek,started to fill the yak up the rest of the way with air and the hose to the pump broke. But at this point nothing was going to stop me, So I tore off part of the plastic bag my blood worms were in and tied it around the hose and filled it up the rest of the way. then I loaded up the yak and launched.

The creek seemed to have even more wildlife then I remembered as a child. throughout the trip I saw Blue herons, ducks, deer, white egrets, Blue finches,cardinals, oposoms, ground hogs,frogs,rabbits, I even had a huge snapping turtle come up right next to my yak, its head was as big as a mans fist!

all just a short distance from the City.
When I was a kid I always caught bullhead catfish, I remember a friend telling me that he caught a largemouth bass and I didn,t believe him, because the water is only a few miles upstream from the backriver sewage plant, theres a lot of runoff from Baltimore after a storm, plus theres no telling what chemicals may be seeping in there from the old dump. its not the cleanest water in the world (I would never eat anything from it) but once I got older I realized that he was probally telling the truth, theres really no reason why there wouldn,t be bass there, I just always used worms as bait back then, and bass don,t usually hit earth worms. I did want to catch a bullhead catfish with worms again, but another goal I had was to try to catch a bass too. so first I setup my rod with a bloodworm and waited, it didn,t take long before I had a fish on, It turned out to be a yellow perch,then I noticed I didn,t have as many worms as I thought, in fact I was out, but that was o.k. because I was eager to cast some lures around anyway. I tied on a spinnerbait and started casting. It didn,t take long before I had another yellow perch on. I caught about 5 yelow perch total, and started to think about heading back, then it happened, bass on!
I actually had a few hits that felt like much bigger fish but they got off. It turned out to be a very rewarding trip, I caught some fish and saw nature in a way that I rarely do,Plus it was close to Home

Perch fishing

The Rockfishing in the upperbay hasn,t been very good for me, but the perch fishing has been great, some areas the fishfinder has been blacking out because there are so many perch (also small stripers, catfish and spot mixed in the schools). Perch don,t pull as hard as stripers, but I still think they are fun to catch, and even better to eat. My basic technic right now is jigging stingsilvers and other spoons that the larger perch will hit, plus if there are any larger stripers around, they may hit them too.

I,ve also got into a few Spot, catfish and stripers at times

Full moon fishing

The full moon has always been my favorite time to fish the upper Chesapeake, you never know what you could catch. the fish can ride the extra strong current much farther north where they can feed on the shedding blue crabs.

There were times in the past when I had incredible evenings using peeler crabs as bait. One evening in the late 90s a huge school of keeper seatrout invaded Rocky pt. state park with many people catching limits, most were amazed that seatrout would be that far north.
So when I went out to fish on june 2, around the mouth of the patapsco, I brought some peeler crabs along. I set up two rods, one with peelers and I jigged with various metal and soft plastics with the other.

But today the jigs out fished the peelers, In fact, I didn,t catch a single fish on the peelers. small fish kept stealing the bait , so the bigger (slower) fish never had a chance to hit it (good for them). The fishing was slow, but its getting better. I caught about ten stripers to 24", and about ten perch, all on jigs

yaking again

I have an old sevylor tahiti inflatable kayak that I got about 15 years ago from marlboro after sending in a bunch of cigarete lables off the cartons. Me and my old buddy Doug Zahner used to use it alot around pooles Isl back then, we were both over 200lbs and it worked great. I dug it out of my shed and took it out for some Bass fishing and it still worked great!

I caught Bass, yellow perch and white perch, I even caught one of my biggest bass yet (About 5lbs) It was cool to be able to paddle right up next to the wildlife

Pics on the Chesapeake

I always like to bring my camera when Im fishing because you never know what you may see, It could be a waterfall rainbow, Seagulls attacking peanut bunker in a feeding frenzy or a nice fish . even something as common as a sunrise or sunset is a sight to see, because everyone is different. (click pics to enlarge)

Chesapeake wildlife pics

With the higher gas prices (and a bad back), I,ve been doing more bank fishing and less fishing from my boat. I think it may be a blessing in disguise because I,ve seen more wildlife this spring then I,ve seen in a long time.