The Eastern Shore is Still Open

A few day I answered an email from Walleye Pete of Four Seasons Guide Service for a walk on trip in the nick of time, and arranged a fishing trip for today.  I rode down with Pete, and we met the other fisherman at 6:30 AM at Buzz's Marina, near Ridge, Maryland.

Plan A (light wind) was to fish the Eastern Shore Islands for Striped Bass and Speckled Trout.  Plan B (High winds) was to fish the Potomac for Red Drum and Strippers.  With winds from 5-10 and slacking, Plan A won, and we went to the shore, and picked our way around shorelines like this.  The weather was in the Goldielocks zone (just right) and there were no flies!


Our first fish of the day was a Speckled Trout, but other than a tiny one I almost landed later, that was the only trout of the day.  However, we caught Striped Bass consistently, a few at nearly every spot we tried.






We had 5 fishermen, and Denny Patrick, who came on on his own dime from New York state to tag striped bass for the American Littoral Society, which runs a tagging program for a variety of fish.  He tagged steadily all day, in the end, tagging 81 fish.  Some were not tagged, because he was busy when we caught them, and some because they were legal size, and we kept them to eat.  Denny tagged his 14,000th fish today, somewhere around half way through the day.

 A relic radio tower on one of the small islands, one teeming with pelicans and cormorants.

Point No Point light, on the way back to west.