Cover Image: Left: Tom J Mitchell is new to fishing and stopped by for some tips. He caught this 25” rockfish on topwater from shore on the Magothy River! Awesome job Tom!! Anglers employee Anna fished Allen’s Pond about a week after it was stocked and caught a few rainbow trout using PowerBait Trout Bait

Rockfish: There are schools of fish literally all over the bay, in the rivers and in eastern bay. There is a ton of bait out there, and the fish are following it. The challenge that we are finding is that with so much bait, it can be hard to get the fish to bite! The key seems to be to cover a lot of ground until you find a school that’s biting. If you are marking fish or fishing under birds, but aren’t getting bites, move on to another school of fish! Fish are mixed in size, from schoolies up to the upper 20s and even the low 30s. Jig with larger sized, 7-10 inch plastics to target those bigger fish. Again, you may need to cover some ground to find them! Trolling is excellent for this reason. We’ve had reports that blue colored tandems are working well! Changing the color of your lure is a good strategy if you are making fish but they aren’t biting. One of our employees tried several different colors when jigging the bay bridge before finding that black or dark blue were the ticket! From shore, both Matapeake and Sandy Point have been producing a few nice sized rockfish on cut bait (alewife or spot) or peeler crabs! You will have to go through a lot of catfish to catch the rockfish though.
Catfish: Catfish can be a lot of fun to catch, and the fishing for them is great right now! There are a lot of blue cats and channel cats being caught north of the bridge! Use any kind of cut bait!
Pickerel: We are seeing some big Pickerel being caught in the Severn, the Magothy, the Patapsco, and the eastern shore mill ponds! Use jerk baits, rat-L-traps, paddletails or live minnows! They’re typically going to be in shallow areas and around structure!
Large Mouth Bass: Bass are very active this time of year and pond fishing has been good! Use reaction style baits like jerk baits.
Speckled Trout: There are still speckled trout in the bay, but they are all pretty far south! Head down to Point Lookout or the Tangier Sound to catch them!
Ocean City Fishing: Tautog season is here! They are being caught off of the route 5o bridge using green crabs or peeler crabs! They are also still catching a decent amount of Rockfish too, especially at night.