| We all know how awful the weather had been this past week, so with the improving conditions on Friday, we decided to see how the striper fishing on the Merrimack would be. With as much 4 inches of rain in the region, the Merrimack was sure to be swollen with fresh water runoff, stained, and for sure running hard. We also found that the river water temperature had dropped from 60 last weekend to the low 50’s. These changes in the water shed would likely have a negative impact on the great fishing of last weekend. We headed out at about 3 pm with the expected high tide at 3:12. We first stopped and fished near Ram and Carr islands, casting flies tight to the grass banks. We had few tail grabbers (small stripers) but no significant fish. We decided to head down river to Joppa flats and fish the "current brakes" (fast water on one side and slower water on the other side).
We began near the pumping station and immediately took several fish in the 22 to 24” size range. The fish we found tended to be clustered together, drift away a bit, and no fish. This was the case up and down the current seams. As the tide and water depth began to fall, the fish seemed to move farther down the flats and out toward the channel. We hooked fish in water depths ranging from 6’ to 10’ along both sides of the seams. For the most part, the fishing was a bit slow with a mix of fish in three basic year class sizes-24 to 26, 18 to 22 and 10 to 12 inches. We fished mostly with fly rods with our usual fly patterns, but I did attempt a few casts with a surface popper and had few fish chase it. The water conditions were less than ideal for surface action and I returned to the fly rod.
Al and I did manage two very nice keeper size stripers, 29 and 32 inches. As the river returns to normal flows and the water begins to warm up, expect the fishing to markedly improve. Next week will bring early morning high tides and this should add up to great fishing!
 
Capt'n Skip
Captain Skip Montello |