We’ve just had two of the most beautiful evenings of the year, and both were very unexpected. At 3:00 PM yesterday it was windy with pouring rain on Kent Island. Dave “Spynet” called and wanted to know if I was fishing. I looked out at the weather and said, “well, er, yeah, we can try it.” By 6:30 PM it was sunny skies and the Bay looked like glass. We didn’t have much time to fish, so we launched off Kent Island and risked the trip on a surgical strike to a nearby location that’s been holding fish. Dave had a new baitcasting rod & reel – dang, another carrot stix – and he was anxious to try it out.

He tied a hotrodded Mann’s Hardnose on to one of his custom jig heads and gave it a fling as soon as we came off plane. Boom, he hooked up on his first cast. Good initiation for an excellent outfit. He switched over to topwater after a while and was just as successful.  I was hoping to repeat past successes with the fly rod but I couldonly get small fish. I guess the big ones didn’t swim close enough to the boat last night.   Read More!

Memorial Day Weekend marks the start of summer for many Chesapeake boaters, but it means a slow-down in fishing for those of us who have been out all along. All the boat traffic on the Bay can put the fish in hiding, but it’s a tough time of year no matter what. Many anglers blame the slow fishing on may worms. May worms, also called clam worms, live on the shell bottoms of the bay and swarm during late May. The reddish worms can be up to 5 inches long and develop small swimming fins to propel them up from the bottom when they mate during the dark of the moon. I guess they are a tasty treat for rockfish. Some fish you catch this time of year area actually yellow or red tinged because of all the may worm gorging. Read More!

Have you ever wondered why fish seem to turn on and off at different times during the day? If you’re like me you’ve probably gone for hours without catching a fish, hardly even getting a strike. Then, click, just like turning on a light switch every cast results in a fish. Fishermen refer to this phenomenon as “the bite,” as in, “The bite turned-on about 3:00 PM and off at dark.” Read More!

There is nothing quite like catching a big striper on top-water. I’ll never forget my first top-water explosion. I was twelve years old, walking the muddy banks of the Holston River in Eastern Tennessee with my father. The lure tied onto my fiberglass rod and Mitchell 300 reel was a wooden Chugger Spook. In my over-sized rubber boots, I was having a hard time keeping up.

“Check your drag,” Dad commanded from his vantage point just below a large set of shoals. “Now, cast right into the “V” where the water runs through and start jerking.” As instructed, I reared back and slung my rod as hard as I could. I overshot the target and landed my lure upstream of the shoal. “Just let her drift down and pop it along,” he said.

Nothing in my limited experience of bank-side pan fishing could’ve prepared me for what happened next. The swift current pulled the chugger quickly down the rip and I popped it a few times along the way. Suddenly, the water blew up as if someone had thrown a hand grenade. A jolt of adrenalin shot though my arms as I felt the line tighten and heard the drag scream. Read More!