Small schoolie stripers continue to be the dominate catch along the beach fronts. Some larger fish and small keepers can be found more prevalent off the rocks, at first light. Bluefish from 2-7 pounds are also mixed in with the day's catch. The hot lure continues to be the "Jumpin' Minnow." Kay at Surfland has a new supply of my favorite color, in stock now. Just ask for "Steve's Plug." Be sure to change out the original hooks. I replace mine with Daiichi Wide Gap 4X Strong Bleeding Bait Treble Hooks in size 2. Gag's 5" Mambo Minnow lure in the "chicken scratch" finish fished slowly in the wash is most successful off the rocks. Water temperatures have really climbed quickly this week so it's important to be out there by 4:00 a.m. The majority of the larger fish continue to be taken by boats, live lining, mackeral or small pollock.
This weekend I will be aboard The Yankee fishing in the "Wharf Classic" Tournament with my buddy, Jan and his crew. I'll give you the details in next week's report.
I caught about 20 fish at the Castle Neck River flats on Tuesday and Wednesday. I drove up to the back side of Crane's and got off the boat and waded in the big channel. I saw a lot of blitzing fish, some in 15 to 20 pound range.
On Saturday and Sunday I fished from Nichol's to the Northern mouth of the Annisquam River, with a 2 day total of about 50 fish. Fish were caught on Salty Bugger Poppers in olive white and yellow, Gag's Popper, soft plastics... I also had a few fish come up on some Tattoo and Salty Bugger Surface Swimmers.
With the tide just past dead low, we started Pat fishing outside the river mouth on the south side of the south jetty. It wasn’t more than about 5 minutes when he hooked and landed his first Merrimack River striper, albeit a dink! Pat proceeded to land a dozen or so more dinks, when we decided to head back up river and drift the Ring's Is. flat. We spent another hour describing our flies, striper fishing techniques and the Merrimack River estuary fishery. It wasn’t long before Pat was right at home with “our” fishery!
With the passing of the cold front late Monday, Tuesday morning’s dawn broke cool, clear and dry with a brisk northwest wind. The hot fishing of the previous several days cooled off as well. Dave, Pat and I fished hard throughout the morning, moving from one flats location to another in search of the stripers, but the catching was slow. We managed about three dozen stripers in 6 hours, with only three small keepers. We promised Pat that Wednesday would bring more and larger fish
We set out Wednesday morning at about 6:30 in the morning with the high tide expected at 8:45. Our plan for the day was to fish from two boats, Dave had Joey Calcavecchia with him and Pat was with me. The strategy was to cover as much of the flats as possible, find the larger fish, and put Pat on them. As the tide approached the high, we found the larger fish mingling in and around the south east shore of Woodbridge Is., but they were not at all interested in our offerings. The large stripers were basically “sitting on the couch” waiting for the tide to turn.
At the tide turn, the large stripers were nowhere to be found. We caught and released several dozen fish from 16” on up to 25”, but no larger fish could be found "boiling up" the calm surface. After about two hours of tide drop, we got into some keeper sized stripers in the 32" range and Pat put two in the boat. We were hoping to find and hook up some larger fish and show Pat just how awesome the Merrimack stripers are, but that did not happen today.
With only Thursday remaining, I promised Pat that we would hook up the larger stripers. Pat and I set out Thursday morning at 7 with the high tide expected at 9:40 and headed for Woodbridge Is. where we had seen larger fish on Wednesday. Captain Al Montello, his fishing buddy Llyod and his son Geoff joined the hunt aboard his boat. We did not find the large stripers in the area we had seen them on Wednesday morning. We did however find lots of smaller fish everywhere on the Joppa and Ring's Is. flat. We had a super time casting a variety of fly patterns that Pat had tied up and brought with him. The fly patterns were designed to imitate a typical baitfish and were tied using synthetic flash materials only. These worked quite well; we hooked and landed a large number of stripers.
The upper fly being Pats all synthetic version of the one that I tie, lower one.
At the tide top, I moved us over to an area very tight to the Joppa marsh grass. As we approached the shallows the water exploded with large stripers. We both made several casts and only spooked more fish. Pat was struck by the number of large stripers in the shallow flat. The scenario that was unfolding was exactly what Dave and I had described to him before he decided to come up and fish with us. A few casts later, Pat hooked a screamer and the fight was on! After several minutes, the large striper was at the boat. We quickly measured her up (39” and 18 pounds) and made the release.
Shortly after releasing Pat's striper I made the decision to head back up Joppa flats to the water treatment plant area. As soon as we arrived, we had stripers boiling all around the boat. We made several drifts of about 300 yds each and managed several keeper sized stripers. The morning was unfolding as I had hoped; lots of action on great stripers! Pat and I fished for a couple of more hours and continued to catch and release quite a few stripers. But time had run out and I needed to get Pat packed up and off to Logan for his flight back to Miami. Needless to say the ride south to the airport was rich in conversation about his Merrimack River outing. During the drive back to Logan, my cell rang and Al Montello relayed that he had just boated a 42”, 22 lb striper for his buddy Lloyd. What a day! And what a great experience fishing with Pat Ford. I look forward to a future adventure.
