Click the Book Covers Below to Buy the Books
Recommendations
Are you ever surprised when someone you know to be a good angler turns out to be an artist? How many fishermen have you met that are also painters, writers, builders, etc? After hanging around fish and fishermen for more than fifty years, it has become clear to me that fishing attracts creative thinkers. Fishing, by its very nature requires artistry, innovation, and experimentation. It frequently compels us to turn loose of what we know, and reach out for things we hope for.
Everyone should believe in something; I believe I’ll go fishing. – Henry David Thoreau
By now, you’ve probably heard me say that it’s the bad days that make us better fishermen. Catching is easy when fish are biting, and almost any lure you throw in the water will work. Conversely, it’s the tough days that require us to get creative and use the less logical side of our brains. My fishing partner Jamie Clough tells a story about an ancient old fly fisherman who has frequented the meat counter where he works for more than a decade. On each visit, he mentions a spot he used to fish where he caught big speckled trout. His secret fishing hole was right under everyone’s nose and smack in the middle of one of the highest-traffic areas in the Chesapeake Bay. Jamie says he’d smile and nod at the stories, but never gave them a second thought until one day last summer. After an unsuccessful and frustrating morning, he decided to check out the old guy’s unlikely trout spot. Can you guess what happened next? It’s a safe bet that Jamie will never pass by that spot again, and I’m thinking that gentlemen gets an extra-thick ribeye once in a while. Read More!
Being a good fisherman has always been about being smart enough, and humble enough to learn when given a chance. -Anthony Bourdain
Actually, Bourdain never said that. Well, he did, but it was about cooking, not fishing. Some of the best fishermen I know like to cook. I guess that’s because there are a lot of similarities. I’ve recently had the opportunity to spend time with some very talented up-and-coming striper fishermen. What impresses me most is their willingness to open their minds and learn. As a result, they’re enjoying some of the best fishing experiences of their lives. That willingness to learn is a trait I’m including in a book I’m working on called, The Right Stuff.
According to the website Cookingschools.com, there are ten top qualities of a great culinary professional. As I read through them, I found it interesting how each of those qualities apply just as easily to great fishing. I hope they won’t mind if I parody their list a little by substituting fishing terms. Take a look to see if you have the recipe for a quality fishing experience. The few words I substituted are in italics.
Creativity: A great angler must be very creative and always willing to try something new. Creativity inspires a lure’s presentation, which is very important to the overall fishing experience.
Passion: A great angler has a tremendous passion for fish and fishing. They enjoy the process of selecting gear, preparing for trips, and creating lures. Read More!
“Are we still going?”
That was the text message I got from my fishing partner Rich early on Super Bowl Sunday morning. It was a beautiful winter day with high temperatures expected to be in the 40s. Winds were light, skies were clear, and a new moon was pushing swift tides up the Chesapeake Bay. There was no reason to postpone our usual Sunday afternoon fishing trip, right? Well, no reason except for the 75 miles of ice clogging our waters.
It’s been a cold winter so far on the Chesapeake Bay. The Bay has frozen all the way across at the Bay Bridge on a couple of mornings and the Eastern shore has been iced in all the way up from Taylors Island to the Susquehanna Flats. The weekend warm-up had loosened up some areas, but almost all the Eastern Shore ramps were still packed in solid.
“Let’s try,” I shot back. We were suffering from serious cases of cabin fever and really wanted to go fishing. My next message went to the third member of our Sunday fishing trio, Jamie. “Any chance you can find an open ramp?” I typed. Both Jamie and Rich grew up on the Shore, and they have plenty of friends and relatives around the water. I imagined the local cellular networks were overwhelmed for a while as they called everyone they knew looking for a place to launch. A whistle from my phone alerted me to a possible plan. Jamie was forwarding pictures of an ice-free Knapps Narrows from his buddy Brian who lives on Tilghman Island. Jamie’s follow up text read, “My dad says Tilghman is always open. Those boys gotta fish.”
It’s winter: it’s cold, it’s wet, and it’s snowy. A lot of the ramps are iced in. It’s a great time of year to sit inside by the fire and read a book or watch a fishing video. I don’t know about you, but that keeps me entertained for about 15 minutes, then I gotta float a boat or something. Fortunately, winter is also a great time to catch and release striped bass. Rockfish are a lot more likely to survive when they’re released in cold weather. Science proves water and air temperatures greatly influence striped bass mortality. In a seminal catch & release study taken on the Susquehanna Flats in 1999, fisheries biologists Rudy Lukacovic and Ben Florence found that 98.4% of released rockfish live when they are turned loose in water temperatures of 57 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Stripers become more vulnerable as the weather warms and water temperatures rise, but their mortality percentage is still less than 4% in water temperatures of 62 degrees and less. Proper handling, good catch-and-release practices, and fishing in higher salinity waters can further improve catch-and-release mortality so that it’s possible to reduce the number of fish we kill to less than 1%. That makes winter a pretty awesome time to fish for those of us who are in it for the experience and not the meat. Read More!
We interrupt this conservation blog with a fishing report. Nah, it’s the other way around. Chesapeake Light Tackle will always be first and foremost a fishing-report website. Well, fishing reports along with some occasional good advice about gear and techniques. Don’t worry – I won’t be lightening up on Maryland DNR’s bad decision to increase rockfish harvest by 14 percent in the face of impending cuts, but I wanted to let you know that I have been lighting up some local fishing spots lately. It’s the holidays, and the weather hasn’t been great, but there are still some fish to be caught for those who are willing to brave the elements and cast for them. The warm water discharges have been hit-and-miss lately. Most of the anglers who have visited them have been disappointed, but once in a while, I hear of a good fish or two being caught. The same goes for the deep holes at the mouths of the rivers and also for my go-to-winter honey hole: Light Tackle University (“LTU”). Read More!
Would you believe in an advanced Doplar-based marine radar system that can detect a 3-foot-square object from 7 miles away? Well, you better because it might just be zoomed in on you next time you’re fishing on the Chesapeake Bay. Last night, I attended a presentation by the Maryland Natural Resources Police (NRP) about a new law enforcement tool called MLEIN. That stands for the Marine Law Enforcement Information Network. It’s a mobile command center consisting of radar monitoring, video surveillance, and advanced software that allows the NRP to keep a very close watch on what’s happening on the water. I was invited to the presentation by Candy Thomson. Yes, the former Baltimore Sun Outdoors Girl has skipped across College creek to a new position in Annapolis as the Public Information Officer for the NRP. I first heard about MLEIN a couple of years ago in one of her articles in the Sun Paper. You can read it here. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-12-14/sports/bs-sp-chesapeake-security-system-20101214_1_radar-units-mlein-cameras
That article reveals a little more than DNR Special Projects Manager Tim Bowman gave away in his presentation last night. Nevertheless, his updates for 2014 were extremely informative. The twenty-something people in attendance – including 8 guys from CCA Maryland – were glued to their seats as Bowman showed real-life examples of how the system worked. Read More!
