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.
