Catfish hitting lures

Its been a strange summer for fishing in the bay for me. I've been catching plenty of Rockfish, Big perch, blues and spot under breakers in the Bay, but I've also been catching lots of catfish in the same schools of breaking fish. I've caught them while jigging spoons, casting swimming shads, I even caught one with a spinner bait, I casted to a fallen tree where I often catch Large mouth bass and the catfish hit the lure on top just like a bass would. I've caught a few catfish with lures over the years, but nothing like this year, In 6 of my last 9 trips I've hooked up with them, A few of the days I,ve caught 2 and 3 catfish per trip on lures. There's been a lot of peanut bunker in the bay, and the catfish are taking advantage of it along with all the other fish. I guess that old belief that catfish have poor vision was just a myth. They are just opportunistic feeders. During the Rockfish moritorium I loved fishing for Catfish with bait, I was basically a Catfish addict, they are great fighters, plentiful and they taste pretty good to. I think its great to be catching so many now because I've often thought about targeting them once again, and getting them on lures is that much more exciting. I actually think catching a Catfish on a lure is much more rewarding then catching a rockfish on a lure, because its so much more unusual.

Trophy Striped bass season

I haven't been able to fish as much this spring as I want. but The few times I've been able to get out in the Upper bay it has been good for Upper bay standards. I'd much rather fish the mid or lower bay during trophy season. the fish seem to want to stop and hang out down that way for a spell during their migration, but its so much more easier to not have to travel far (especially when fishing solo). I've been mostly trolling and getting a couple fairly nice fish regulary in the 40" range. Some people don't like trolling but I think it can be very relaxing, kind of like sailing or bank fishing, just kick back and enjoy the Bays natural beauty until you hear a fish pulling drag.
One of my best trips so far was on may 1, 2008
I got through the cut at around sunset and tried jigging at a few spots without any luck, then I headed a few miles farther south to try some trolling. I put out my spread and literally seconds after putting my fifth and last rod in the rodholder, it doubled over and I reeled in a 40" fish


Right after taking a pic of it, another rod doubled over, This fish looked to be about an inch or two shorter but it fought a lot harder, right after boating that fish two rods went down at once, I released that fish quikely and I grabbed the rod that looked like it had the biggest fish and brought that fish in, meanwhile the fish on the other rod got off. by then my arms were tired. I started trolling in the direction of my homeport and put two of my deeper lines back in, about 15 minutes later I caught another mid 30s fish. It started to get a little to rough for my 17' boat, plus my arms were tired so I decided to call it a day. I looked at my watch and it was still only 8am, a lot of fishing in a short amount of time!! The way I like it..

Upper Chesapeake bay trophy pickerels 2/3/2008

The Winters freeze that caused The ice in the upper bay finally thawed because of a break in the weather, The days temperature was rising to over 60 degrees.
I hit the water at noon hoping that the warm spell would trick the fish into thinking it was spring (fish don’t have calendars).We also got over 2” of warm rain the day before, I wasn’t sure if that would hurt or help me in catching fish. I had a few spots I wanted to try but first I thought I would try a spot near hart/miller island where I did good with yellow perch last spring, it was actually a good spot throughout most of the summer until the salinity rose from the drought which made them harder to catch. The water is basically shallow, and I was hoping there would be fish there because it may warm up quicker. I started casting a mini spinner bait, working it very slow. After about twenty minutes I hooked up with a good fighting fish that put my ulta light setup to the test, at first I thought it was a striper or a large mouth bass until I got a better look at it and saw it was a big pickerel, I was actually confused at first because I’ve never seen a pickerel that big before, Even though I knew there were no Northern Pike in the Upper bay, I had to look at it for a few seconds to verify that it was a pickerel
I took a couple pictures then measured it and it was just a hair under 26”!
After releasing that fish I was smiling from ear to ear. I’ve caught plenty of pickerel in loch raven Reservoir and a few in the upper bay rivers, but I don’t think many were over 20” if that ( I’ve never bothered to measure them) and I’ve never caught them in the Hart/Miller island area before. It crossed my mind to head in early because I didn’t think I would top that, but a few minutes later, about 50’ away I hooked up again. This fish was slightly over 27” and even fatter!!
A little while later I got another fish on that felt like a pickerel but it got off..
I knew the 27” was a trophy (To me anyway) but when I got home and looked up the state record Pickerel for the bay I was shocked to see it was only 6lbs 8ozs
I think its possible it could had been a record fish. ..My camera takes terrible pics when its sunny but I had a double whammy this time because the fish started going nuts while I was setting up the camera and I got slime all over the lens

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