Chesapeake Light Tackle

Lately I’ve been walking around with a big smile on my face humming Bob Seger songs. Fifteen knot sustained northeast winds with rainy, overcast skies since Saturday are enough to keep most people off the Bay.  If they only knew what they’re missing.  A low pressure system stalled off the Atlantic Coast is churning up the waves and driving them into the Chesapeake Bay.  Last weekend’s full moon pushed even more water into the area.  The end result is that there are coastal flood warnings posted for Annapolis, Baltimore, and all along the western shore.  The other result is that the fish are going nuts!  ♣  I’ve been hanging out the last couple of evenings at my very favorite fishing spot on the Bay.  The William Preston Lane Jr Memorial aka, Bay Bridge.  The fish are hanging out there too.  The northeast wind is pushing directly against the strong incoming so the net is that a boat can stay almost stationary at any given location.  There’s a little bouncing to put up with, but it creates the optimum situation for fishing the pilings and underwater structure near the bridge. Read More!

Almost all I know about fishing I learned first in East Tennessee mountain streams.  Tactics like swimming a lure with the current, casting to the deep side of cover, matching the hatch, looking for the dark water, minimizing terminal tackle, and the importance of stealth are all stream fishing techniques that translate easily to fishing in the Chesapeake Bay.  As much as I love the Bay and targeting the many species that live here, there are times when the call of the creeks is so great that I have to drop everything and go.  Today was one of those days.  It might sound odd to anyone not familiar with the area, but the Appalachian Mountains are less than an hour away from our home here on Kent Island.  In two hours, I can be across the primary backbone of the Blue Ridge and into the Shenandoah Valley.  The Potomac and Susquehanna rivers, which are the two biggest tributaries to the Bay, are essentially mountain streams.  Read More!

While I haven’t seen any Spanish mackerel flying around the Eastern Bay recently, I was fortunate enough to find a school farther south tonight.  I fished onboard Fishadler II with Mark, launching out of Queen Anne Marina on Kent Island.  It’s a full moon which usually means increased current, but we haven’t had much incoming tide this week.  Fortunately, the outgoing current has been very strong.  About 3:00 PM – during the last hour of  the outgoing – we found breakers near Sharp’s Island Light and noticed macs in the mix.  That’s about seven miles south of where they were last week.  Although we had trolling gear on the boat, it looked like there might be enough to catch some casting. I started slinging a homemade three-quarter-ounce inline sinker, flattened and rolled in super-fine blue glitter with a treble hook attached.  I think I hooked six or eight macs, but didn’t get them all in the boat.  Casting for macs is a different game than trolling for them.  Even if you can find them and manage to hook one, getting them to the boat is very challenging.  The trick is to keep their nose pointed toward the boat, then sling them up over the side.  If they ever turn and head off in the opposite direction, they’re usually gone. Read More!

Temperatures have cooled dramatically in the past couple of days after Tropical Storm Danny pushed on up the coast and a strong cold front moved across the Bay. I wanted to see what change the cooler weather might have made to the Mid-Bay bite we’ve been following since March.  My buddy Rich and I launched at the Shipping Creek ramp into a very strong outgoing tide and ran south about ten miles until we caught up with the leading edge of the current.  Along the way we encountered about 25 boats, many from the charter fleet, livelining and chumming on the north end of Poplar Island.  Considering how good the casting bite has been this summer, I wondered if they know what they are missing by sitting in one place and soaking bait. Read More!

I thought I’d never get on the water today. Even if tropical storm Danny wasn’t offshore, a rainy day in August is hard to come by. Chesapeake Bay fishing is always at its best when skies are gray and there are big storms nearby. I lost sleep last night thinking about it. I had to work, but thought I might make the D.C. turn-around in time to get a half-day at least on the water. For a zillion reasons, that didn’t happen.  Nevertheless, I managed to get three quality hours in the rain at the Bridge.

The Bay was deserted. I never saw another fishing boat all evening; not one. It looked like January out there. Even the Matapeake Pier was empty. Instead of the usual Latino girls calling out “boat ride, boat ride,” I had to put up with these ugly dudes. I think they’ve been following me since that buzzard feather thing. Still, you know it’s going to be good fishing when you can see working gulls from from the boat ramp. Read More!

I can’t remember when I first learned to make fishing lures, but it seems like I’ve always made them. Some of my earliest childhood memories include the times my brothers and I spent with our father in his garage workshop in the hills of Tennessee.  There were always lures lying around in various stages of creation.   Dad melted a lot of lead and made a lot of plastic worms.  I’ll never forget the terrible smell of that little shop.  Sometimes the smoke was so thick from burning plastic that you could barely see a foot in front of you.  I don’t know how any of us survived the noxious fumes.  My dad also poured his own jigs, tied his flies, carved cedar plugs and experimented with more fishing contraptions than you can shake a jig pole at. I still have some of his creations.  I usually don’t fish with them, but I keep them lying around my shop here in Maryland.  They fit right in with the dozens of half-made lures I hope to finish some day.
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