Middle Rapp River Fishing June 8/9

[SlateDog]

On Friday afternoon on a falling tide my son and I tried for flounder on the Rapp between #10 and #8. We were drifting chartreuse jigs or white jigs dressed with a big fat minnow and and fresh squid. Tried a number of different spots and the drift was pretty good but we got skunked on the flounder. We did get a large croaker. I have not not heard of many flounder being caught in the river yet so I hope that changes soon.

We switched to light tackle shallow water fishing on Saturday and Sunday and the resident rockfish were extremely active in the shallows. The fishing was best very early or very late in the day on a moving tide. Every pier or stretch or rip rap on the main river stem between Towles Point and Morratico seemed to hold fish. In some cases a LOT of fish where they kind of got into feeding frenzy hitting cast after cast. A lot of them were not keepers but a lot of nice keepers up to 24" were in the mix. We lost one very large fish when he managed to get around a piling and snap off. In some cases when you had a nice fish on you would see several others swimming right with him at the side of the boat and somone would literally drop a jighead at them and the others would attack it. Big croaker up to 16" were hitting lures too along with some nice fat white perch. I was using a Gulp Saltwater 4" chartreuse swimming mullet on a 1/4 oz jig head and they could not seem to stay away from it. My son was catching on a white Gulp swimming mullet and he also did good on big live minnows with no weight on a circle hook cast under docks. Tom had good luck once again on his fly rod.

Only a few days left of the spring bay season in VA to catch rockfish so hopfully some of you can get out there a catch a few. Here is pic of one of our keepers that wound up in fish tacos for lunch on Saturday. Good luck.

[kayaking4stripers]

Nice! I caught few myself this weekend.