Left: Natalie K and Morgan R caught 9 nice sized catfish with Reel Chaos Fishing Team using fresh alewife! Right: Ariel Gonzalez caught this catfish along with 11 others at Sandy Point Park using fresh alewife!
Catfish: As you can see from our cover photo, catfish are all over the bay and can be caught from a boat or from shore using fresh alewife! Use a fish finder rig, which we recently explained how to tie. Click here for the video! Channel edges and the mouths of the rivers are always good areas to target. Podickory Point, the Susquehanna Flats , and the Patuxent River are notoriously good spots for massive fish! Fishing an outgoing tide is best!
Snakehead: Western shore snakehead fishing in the Patuxent is really picking up! Fishing at Blackwater continues to be good as well, but remember that Snakehead fishing can always be hit or miss. They are either biting like crazy or they aren’t! So don’t get discouraged if you have an off day, get out there as much as you can and you will certainly hit a hot day! Use paddletails or heavy inline spinners. Live minnows always work well too!
Shad: Classic spots like Fletchers in the Potomac continue to be great for Shad! They are also showing up in the Susquhanna as well as the upper Patuxent and some of the eastern shore spots such as Red Bridges and Tuckahoe Creek. Use shad darts or casting spoons. You can also rig them in tandem, a 1/8 oz casting spoon on the bottom with a 1/8 oz shad dark on the top!
Flounder: Flounder are holding in shallow water this time of year around Ocean City, Assateague, Chincoteague and the mouth of the bay! In shallow water, bottom bouncing gulp on a 1/4 oz jig head will work well!
Large Mouth Bass: The pre-spawn bite is on in all of the local ponds, and the majority of the fish will be holding on shallow water flats. Try using a chatterbait, rigged weedless with a paddletail.