Several Anglers employees including Alex, Sammy, Ryan and AJ did a bunch of fishing for Pickerel and Panfish this week locally in the Magothy River and on the Eastern Shore in some of the mill ponds!
Rockfish: There still a great rockfish bite in the main bay, with most reports coming from the Thomas Point area, the mouth of Eastern Bay and down to Chesaepeake Beach. The fish are in deep water on the bottom right now, and can be targeted by trolling or jigging. In both cases you are going to need to use some weight to get your lures down to the fish on the bottom. Use a 1-1.5 ounce jig head for jigging, and bulk up the profile of your baits by using a plastic like Bust ‘Em Baits Fat Boys, and/or adding a skirt. For trolling, umbrellas have been working well. Use larger profile lures like a 9 inch shad for your teaser. Curly tails have been working very for the main baits. Like with jigging, you need to get the lures down deep, so be sure to have a variety of inline sinkers. Check out our guide on how much weight to use here. If you prefer to bait fish, eels are working really well now too!
Pickerel and Panfish: Up in the rivers and creeks off of the main bay, and in the mill ponds on the eastern shore, there is a variety of fun winter fishing to be done. Pickerel, crappie and yellow perch can all be caught using live minnows under a bobber, or 3 inch paddletails on light jig heads. Bladed jig heads like Z-man willow vibes definitely help to entice a bite, especially for pickerel! A feather jig tipped with a wax worm will catch crappie and blue gill. There are also still white perch being caught in shallow water using spinners like mepps and perch pounders. These spinners work for pickerel too! It’s a great time of year to target multiple species in these shallow creeks and ponds using the same techniques!