End of April captains log

Hey swabs!

April was a fun month of fishing but a little slow by what I'm used to in fishing the Chesapeake. We got a lot of cold fronts and high pressure systems that came through right before weekends which I think really hurt the shallow water bite. We still caught fish but not as many as I'd hoped. Trollers seemed to do ok but they were fishing for 6-8 hours for one or two bass. The ones they did catch were big though. 

I'm going to start doing a Friday fly fishing report and forecast which should be fun. I'm headed to the keys this weekend and the cape later in the month so there's a lot to look forward to!

 

April

   

Fish are back and so am I!

Sorry for the long time off swabs.  Life had me looking away from the wheel for a minute but I'm back and better than ever!  Striper fishing started off well in 2016 at the Calvert Cliffs nuke plant and elsewhere but lousy weather at the end of March and beginning of April has slowed things down a little for us fly fishermen.  The cold fronts followed by high pressure has made for finicky fish and cold, windy days on the water.  Although if you fish during the week you've probably had the opposite experience since it seems like the lousy fishing has been timed perfectly with weekend fishing.  Maybe it'll protect the spawning fish though.

Bassin

Saturday turned out to be colder and windier than forecast but still fish able. We're still finding fish in shallow water which is great on the fly rodWe ended up catching a hickory shad too which I've never caught in the main part of the bay

Trout fishing

Friday we hit a local stocked stream to fish for trout. I do very little freshwater fishing and even less trout fishing so it was a fun experience. Having this five minutes from the house is great

 

We went back on Sunday and found one more

Finally!!

The last two weeks have seen some much warmer weather and the bay has gotten to a decent temp for some good fishing. The kill season opened on Saturday but with the new regulations I'm hoping a lot fewer breeding fish were killed than in years past. Saturday was very slow for us. We didn't catch the first fish for a few hours until Bleier got this nice one:

We decided to fish for a while after that and I tied into this nice fish:

The fish was about 36" and wicked fat and heavy indicating she had not spawned out yet. All fish were obviously released. 

Very excited to see some fish around!!

Slow start to the season

The season has been off to a slow start. They bass have been appearing sporadically in the mid bay probably as a result of the cold early spring slowing down the warm up of the bay. Mr Bleier's Facebook reminder showed a picture of a 28" bass we caught two years ago today which tells me we need to get out in shallow water again soon!

Last weekend we fished hard all day Sunday in the mid bay and there was very little life. I even resorted to wire lining for a little while with only one knockdown that didn't hook up to show for it. Beautiful day and this Saturday will be another one.