Chesapeake Bay Fishing Report

Our 2nd Annual White Perch Open was this past Sunday and it was a huge success. We had over 200 anglers fish in the tournament and the day couldn’t have been more perfect. The weather was amazing, the fried perch was delicious and beers were ice cold! Everyone seemed to have a great time and we’re already looking forward to next year! We can’t thank Podickory Point Yacht Club enough for their hospitality and how helpful their staff was. Congratulations again to all the winners, you guys beat out some tough competition!

Rockfish

Trolling for Rockfish has been good recently. Some areas to target in the northern part of the bay are the Southwest side of Pooles Island and the Northeast side of Hart-Miller Island. Moving further south in the bay areas like Love Point, Baltimore Light and the Bay Bridge have all been producing decent fish trolling red surgical tubes in 25′-35′ of water. Some anglers are finding some Blues mixed in so you may want to mix some spoons in your arsenal to keep them from shredding your baits. A little tip for better success rate is to troll in an East-West direction vs. North-South. Seems to help land more fish as of late.

Moving further south in the bay around Thomas Point and Chesapeake Beach they’re catching a larger mix of Bluefish, Spanish Mackerel, and Rockfish but the Spanish Macks seem to be pretty prominent. Trolling drone spoons on size 1 or 2 planers at speeds of 7-8 knots around the mouth of the Eastern Bay, Poplar Island, Thomas Point and Deale has been working well.

Jigging for Rockfish has also been decent over the last few days. We’ve been catching them with regularity around the Eastern side of the Bay Bridge Pilings. Some other areas that have been doing well have been Love Point, Podickory Point, the mouth of the Patapsco River and around Pooles Island. Look to use a 3/4oz. – 1oz. jig with a 7″ BKD or Z-Man scented jerk shad. Try using a skirt of contrasting color to help slow the fall rate of your jig. It also helps increase the profile of your baits, triggering larger fish to bite.

Chumming has been doing well this week also. Tollys Bar, Thomas Point, Hacketts and Love Point were all producing fish this week. Chumming/Chunking large alewife or with soft crab caught nice fish around 25″-30″. Lots of smaller fish were caught also but they’re still a ton of fun!

Live-lining Spot around the Bay Bridge was good this week as well. We also saw success in the mouth of the Eastern Bay while live-lining spot. A few guys were implementing stinger hooks on the Spot to reduce the amount of Bluefish biting the Spot in half and not catching anything. Most of the time their rigs are weightless but if you’re not getting bit, add a 1/4oz-1/2oz. weight to the rig to get your spot down a little further in the water column.

Fishing from shore this week was most productive around Romancoke and Matapeake Piers. We saw some smaller Flounder, a Remora and smaller Rockfish. If you’re looking to throw some lures out there the best place to do that would be Thomas Point. Grab one of the passes and try throwing the new Coltsniper baits from Shimano. They’re brand new this year and we’ve been catching on them. They have great colors, amazing action and most importantly, they catch fish! For those fishing with bait, you’ll want to use soft crab or bloodworms this week. Those two seem to be doing the best.

White Perch, Spot & Croaker

Lots of Perch, Spot and Croaker were all caught this week on hard bottom areas or around structure like the Bay Bridge. Some really good baits to use this week would be Soft or Peeler Crab, Bloodworms or Razor Clams. While bottom fishing, some anglers have even caught Flounder, Black Drum and Redfish. Some good areas to target in the southern portion of the bay would be Cove Point, Calvert Cliffs in the evening. A few hours early in the am catching leads to dead water shortly after sunrise but the evening bite was great.

In the upper part of the bay these fish can be caught nearly anywhere there is structure on a moving tide. Fishing around pier pilings with small spinners like the Berts Perch Pounders seemed to work fantastic. Fishing hard shell bottom with top & bottom rigs baited with Razor Clams did really well also.

Spanish Mackerel, Drum, Redfish & Cobia

There have been plenty Spanish Macks coming over the rails this past week in the Southern Bay region. Trolling drone spoons around the Target Ships, buoy 72 & 72a as well as near Cove Point did really for catching Spanish Macks. If you’re looking to target Cobia, the best way to catch them is drifting and live-lining eels or chumming. If you don’t have live eels (or just don’t like handling them) you can pick up the Savage Gear or Tsunami eel lures. They are fantastic eel imitation baits and you can just vertical jig them off the bottom to catch Cobia. Some other good areas to target would be Point Lookout, Piney Point, or the pier under the Solomons bridge.

Crabbing

Some of the area crabs are still a little undersized but we’re seeing more and more keepers and they’re definitely getting fatter. The best times we’ve found this past week have been early morning on a moving tide in 4′-8′ of water. Razor Clams have been the best baits but Chicken Necks have also been working pretty well. Some of the areas that have been better have been the Wye River, the mouth of the Miles and in the Choptank.