Back From Fishin'

The weather is changing, and the fishing with it. The waters are starting to warm, particularly the shallows, and the fish are starting to prowl around the shallow bays and creeks on the Eastern Shore. 

There was some fog in a few places, but otherwise an extraordinary day, clear skies and windless, eventually reaching well over 60 F. We saw the waters in the shallows warm from about 40 to 50 over the course of the morning.

We encountered a very long (1/4 mile?) gill net anchored and stretched along one of the places we wanted to fish. Now, gill nets for striper are supposed to be drifting, and monitored by a boat. This was anchored and as near as we could see, no watermans boat was attending it. When we returned at 9:30, the net was gone. Pete called DNR and had a conversation about it. 

Yes, fish were caught. It wasn't super hot, but we caught a pretty good numbers along a shoreline, all using crankbaits, mostly Rapala X-Rap 12s. Most were fat, feisty mid to high 20s inch fish. Pete had his drone up, and could see large packs of fish in the shallows, some of them very large.

Jason with the biggest fish of the day. We didn't measure it before it went back, but it was certainly near or over 40 inches.