| June 23, 2008 |
| The past week was definitely one of contrasts; small fish one day, big fish the next. The early morning low tides fished quite well outside at the rivers mouth and the afternoons fished better on the flats. At the rivers mouth we had birds working over schools of bait being pushed by mixed sized stripers. Monday morning was especially productive with the low cloud cover allowing the stripers to be less spooky. I had Dave G. from Rivers Edge Trading Co. out with me for some super action. We found a number of fish working bait on the sand bars off the south jetty and both hooked up several stripers each on flies and on topwater poppers. We had stripers busting bait at the surface within 30 feet of the Maritime when I suggested to Dave that he should make a few casts with his topwater Crease Fly (see below). It wasn’t long before a large striper came up and slammed the small blue crease fly. Dave fought the striper for several minutes before I got the Boga on her lower jaw. The striper measured up at 40 inches and 23 pounds, a super striper on a topwater fly! We took a few photos before release. We fished through the high tide and later that day, on the dropping tide, we had good success drifting Joppa. Dave and I landed several more stripers including a 36 inch fish that fell for a sand eel look-a-like streamer.
 The remainder of the week brought mostly sunny skies and as such, we had to work harder to land “numbers”. The fish that we hooked up were mostly keeper sized and above 30 inches. Far fewer 20 to 30 inch fish were hooked on the flats last week as compared to the weeks prior. The rivers mouth, however, fished well throughout the week with big stripers falling readily for live tinker macks and smaller fish eating flies and soft plastics. On Wednesday, a large fresh school of big stripers entered the flats on the rising tide and when the tide turned out, they turned on and many anglers took their fair share of big stripers including a season best 44 inch, 32 pound striper. The cow ate my “spike mack pattern” as did several other 30+ inch stripers that afternoon. The striper action remained fairly consistent throughout the remainder of the week with smaller stripers back up on the flats Friday. The early summer action should continue strong into next week; fish low light early mornings or late afternoons.  Steve P. reported good striper action ocean side at several Cape Ann hot spots including the creek and spit at Good Harbor. Most of the fish Steve hooked up were 20 to 30 inches in size with one or two at 34 inches.The Candy House fishing has been inconsistent but but some anglers are still finding some striper action on both ends of the tide. Gloucester harbor continues to produce good action on chunk bait at several easy access locations from the rocks at Stage Fort, Dog Bar and at the state fish pier. The bluefish action is spotty at best, but look for the action to pick up soon. My friends to the south tell me that the striper action is getting even better, so we should expect the good fishing to continue. Porter B. reports some very good action happening at Crane Beach; here is his report: I fished the back-side of Crane , lots of fish from 20-26 inches on topwater plugs, I also fished the front side Sat/Sun nothing. I got some nice fish up to 28" in the Annsiquam as well. Thanks Porter!
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