Falll Rockfishing on the Upper bay

Luckily the dirty water brought on from this summers storms started to clear just in time for some great Fall Striper fishing. Once the temperture started to cool a little, The Rockfish started to school up, and there was some outstanding fishing to be had, with many fish over 30", in fact, catching fish over 30" was so common, it was expected!..I actually didn't see a lot of working birds early in the fall, and the marks on the fish finder didn't always show a lot, I had to basically go to a spot, work it thoroughly and hope something was there, if not, I'd try another spot until I find them. And ofcoarse finding a spot where no other fishermen are around to scare the fish is as always the most important thing of all..actually with the lack of bird action and marks, the biggest obstacle of all was trying to get away from other boats that wanted to fish the exact spot as me. I could actually catch three times more fish if it wasn't for other boaters. If they only knew the real key to finding fish is finding a spot away from other boats. So many do the complete opposite and go wherever they see another boat...maybe one day this winter I will do a blog story on that...
Another possitive thing is the huge schools of juvenile Rockfish throughout the bay, This springs Striper spawn was a very good one, In the last couple of weeks I have been seeing birds working over acres of small fish, the next couple years should bring some exciting light tackle action with smaller fish!

Hot summer on the Chesapeake

I didn't fish as much this summer as usual, this was the hottest summer ever recorded in history, last summer was the hottest on record but this summer blew that record away. With water temps in the bay reaching into the 90s, the fish obviously aren't used to the temps. especially Rockfish, they are primarily cool water fish, the larger migrants generally go where ever the water temps are from 50 to 70 degrees, migrating into the Chesapeake in the spring and going north in the summer to the New England states to seek out a more comfortable temperture. The smaller schoolie Rockfish are pretty much stuck in the Chesapeake and try to stay where the temps are most comfortable to them. So when this years heatwave brough temps over 100* in june, I knew the Rockfish in the mid and lower bay wouldn't move north into my part of the bay until the water finally cooled. the Upper bay is more shallow and the fish just won't travel miles across that hot water. But there were still some Rockfish in the Upper bay, and catching a limit of fish usually wasn't very hard. Just bailing 100 legal size fish in a day wasn't going to happen. But the White perch and Catfishing was very good. My general routne this summer was to target Rockfish for part of the day but always make time for the great perch and catfish fishing. The perch fishing was so good you never needed any bait, just jigs like stingsilvers. there were many days when I C&Red most of the day, then filled the cooler up with more then enough White perch in the last hour of the trip. The last couple weeks we had slightly lower water temps and the Rockfishing did get better, but then we got a weekend of very heavy storms, folowed by a hurricane Irene a week later, then Tropical Storm Lee came up the coast a week later and stalled out right over us! they opened all the Susquhanna floodgates, first time since Hurricane Agnes in 1972.
The Susquehanna runs as far as New york, And everything that runs off into the water will eventually make its way into the Bay
I haven't been out on the Chesapeake since then but I have heard reports of Chocolate color water and A LOT of debris floating around, everything from entire trees to refrigerators. so It may be a while before things get better, hopefully it is not a major enviromental disaster like Agnes was.

Loch Raven fishin

I didn't fish the bay very much this spring. I got a used VHS tape at a fishing flea market last winter about catching Northen Pike and I really wanted to catch one, so I started fishing Loch raven pretty hard. I never did catch a Northern, I actually didn't even catch a single Bass, which is unusual, I normally catch quite a few at Loch Raven in the spring. But I did catch some nice Pickerel, Yellow perch and my biggest Crappie yet at about 16" on a Booyah spinner bait with a 6" Gulp sand eel. Since I sometimes hike fairly long distances, I can't take a lot of lures, I will usually take some spinnerbaits for casting close to shore, then some type of lure that casts far like a casting spoon, And usually some 2"-3" twister tails for when nothing bigger is biting, I can usually always catch something on a twister, but they will usually be smaller (but not always). I never catch a lot of fish at loch raven like I do in the bay where catching 100+ fish on a trip is not uncommon (excluding white perch fishing or lucking onto a big school of crappie), but that may be because I know the bay better, plus I fish the Loch from shore, which can be a big disadvantage. But its fun hiking through the woods and casting the shoreline, and there is a great chance of catching a real trophy close to home. some of the downsides this spring was getting a very sore throat and difficulty swallowing and needing a visit to the doctors for alergy meds, and also recently finding a Deer tick on my waist and having to take antibiotics, but I guess you have to take the good with the bad. I figure since I am on antibiotics I can still fish there for a while, but I may have to stop fishing there in the summer, Deer ticks can be very serious, and eventhough I took plenty of precautions like sprying myself with deepwoods before each trip, constantly checking myself for ticks and showering after every trip I still got a deer tick. Its about time for me to start fishing the bay more anyway :)

Still some surprises while fishing

One of the things thats always kept me interested in fishing is being surprsied. The more I fish the less surprised I get, but it still happens. I still remember catching my fish speckled sea trout years ago in the Patapsco river and wondering what it was. recently I was shore fishing at Loch Raven with nightcrawlers hoping to catch some perch or maybe a carp, but instead I hooked up with a fish that felt like a Bass, when I pulled it out of the water I didn't know what it was, It was about 18"and it looked like it had a Suckers body and a trouts head. I asked another fisherman nearby and he didn't know what it was either. so I took a picture and released it, then went home and searched the DNR website without any luck, so I posted it on a local fishing site http://www.pierandsurf.com/fishing-forum/forumdisplay.php?8-Maryland-Delaware. and a few guys knew what it was right away, it turned out to be a Fallfish, Its actually the largest member of the minnow family. seems to be a fairly common catch in the Gunpowder by Trout fishermen. I actually enjoyed catching this fish more then catching a Rockfish over 40", just because its more unusual to me

great end to the season

I thought the major flood that hit the Chesapeake in early fall could adversely affect the fishing, but I couldn't had been more wrong, I had one of my best days of fishing the very next day. The fishing stayed very good for a good part of the fall, with many large schools of fish, but the cold weather came earlier then usual, I had to start finding fish farther and farther south, But luckily as the schools of fish migrated farther south, there were a few spots where the fish stayed around in the Upper bay until the seasopn ended, and the fishing was very reliable. Actually a lot of the spots where I was finding fish was after spotting working terns, some call them "liar birds" because they are known to dive where there are no Rockfish, but not this fall, Most of the fish under them weren't very big, but you could quikely get a limit if you wanted.

I was also lucky enough to find some large Rockfish that migrated in from the ocean. My biggest was caught trolling down by the bay bridge. overall it was another great year of fishing the upper chesapeake. There was a lot of extreme weather events, Historic heatwaves, Very cold weather that came early and fast, and a pretty big flood, but the fishing stayed strong considering all that.
I have heard some complaints about this years Rockfishing, And I can understand how some could have had trouble, I had to do some things differently, changing tactics and locations, ect..If you didn't adapt to the different conditions and made the wrong choices you could easily have trouble catching. The fish really aren't hard to figure out, if you have faith and don't give up