Maryland Fishing Reports

Hard to believe, but December 15, and the rockfish season in Maryland’s portion of Chesapeake Bay, have come and gone already. And here comes Christmas! While it is difficult to detect from our current perspective, far out on the horizon is April, and the beginning of the 2015 fishing season. However, in the meantime, many anglers have put their boats in storage for the winter. Charter guides such as captains Walt at Light Tackle Charters, Walleye Pete at Four Seasons Light Tackle Charter, and Richie Gaines at Angler’s Connection Guide Service have moved south and are now fishing Virginia’s portion of the bay, and freshwater. Many of the first late-fall reports from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel were disappointing; however, anglers have recently hooked up with a few more bigger stripers, primarily while fishing ...

It’s been a very challenging fall, to say the least. An abundance of windy, wet and cold weather, including the passage of the recent nor’easter, has played havoc with many planned fishing trips, or wiped them out altogether. While rockfish are still available in a number of Chesapeake Bay locations, getting to them has been difficult, and darn near impossible, much of the time. Some of those anglers who have been available and ready to fish when the weather has been decent have managed to put together some ...

Frequent unfavorable weather conditions, hunting seasons, and the approaching end of the Chesapeake Bay striped bass season in Maryland have resulted in significantly fewer anglers and a lack of fishing reports information. While fishermen may be thinning out, striped bass numbers have remained high in certain locations. It's not time to put away the boat just yet.

One of the few first-hand reports I have been able to come up with is from Captain Walt at Light Tackle Charters. He said striped bass fishing in Maryland’s lower portion of the bay has been ...

Cold weather, the holidays and hunting season can conspire to reduce our fishing time, and a good number of anglers have winterized their boats. But make no mistake about it, when we do hit the water in the late season we have the opportunity to catch some really big stripers. The recent 22nd annual MSSA Fall Classic provided plenty of proof of that as some awesome stripers were weighed in, including a massive 46.6 pounder for Josh Suchter, a 45.7 pounder for Tom Byrne, a 44.15 pounder for Marcus Wilson, and other big fish of 35 to more than 40 pounds! Congratulations to those winning anglers and the MSSA for another exciting and successful tournament that featured big fish and big cash prizes of more than ...

Before the bone-chilling cold moved it, good numbers of nice rockfish were being caught in the lower Susquehanna River and on Susquehanna Flats. At Port Deposit on the Susquehanna River, anglers reported catching real nice rockfish to 28 inches while casting Alabama rigs, Storm shads, leadheads dressed with Bass Kandy Delights (BKDs) and Bass Assassins, and Rat-L-Traps and other crankbaits. Those same lures have also taken smaller 14- to 20-inch rockfish in the shallows around Battery Island, along the channel edges on Susquehanna Flats, and just off Sandy Point at the southern end of the flats. In addition, in the shallows around ...

The cold front that everyone was talking about as it moved in from Canada and the upper Midwest finally rolled into the Chesapeake Bay region, bringing with it plummeting temperatures and significant wind. There were good numbers of fish around before the blow, and there will still be fish to catch when conditions settle. A number of techniques have been working well on rockfish, including casting to breaking fish, jigging with metals and leadheads with plastics, and casting to ...