Pacemaker Fishing Forum

Saturday was another fun morning fishing with my father in law Roger out of Chesapeake Beach. The weather forecast was spot on and the Bay was dead calm when we pulled in at 6:15am.

Picked up some bloodworms, launched, and began catching Spot right out front in 18ft. We had a good mix of various sized Spot without too many other bait stealers. My father in law had the hot hand and was outfishing me 2-1. We loaded the cooler live well with about 20 and started to make our way across the bay. I had heard that the Rockfish bite around Eastern Bay had been a bit hit-and-miss the last couple of weeks, so we headed further south towards Tilghman and figured we would try our luck in that area.

We ran over school after school of large bunker on the way over but nothing seemed to be harassing them so we kept moving until we got to a nice edge where it sharply comes up from 40ft to 20ft. Sounded around and saw a few scattered marks so we anchored up and dropped baits. After about 10-15 minutes with no run-offs we pulled anchor and kept searching.

I could see some birds and what looked like a charter boat in close to the island. I figured that it looked a bit too shallow but pointed the boat over that way. We got a bit closer and I could see that the "Bay Hunter" charter was bailing Rockfish left and right so I idled down and kept my distance looking for our own marks a bit further away.

Soon after I heard a call and looked up and the captain and mate were waving us over. We motored over slowly and they told us that they had their limit and that we should drop anchor right next to them as they were thick under their boat. That was a might classy move on the captain's part, and never one to look a gift-horse in the mouth, we thanked him profusely and dropped the pick. Before the anchor rope had even pulled tight, Roger was into the first fish of the day. Gave the Captain a final thumbs up to thank him for his kindness and they were heading home with their limit by 8am.

Word obviously got out and a fleet of boats were soon headed our way but no matter as we picked off enough for our limit before the bite shut down. Scored a couple of fat fish at 25" and 23" to finish the limit. We released the last of our jumbo spot and switched to jigs. I could still see some good marks under the boat but the fish weren't the least bit interested in the BKD's, Stingsilvers, and Hopkins jigs we were throwing. 

Packed it in around 10am and decided to try trolling for a Spanish Mack on the way back across the bay. We zigged and zagged our way back but only picked up a sole Bluefish in 55ft, and snagged a couple of bunker in the back when we got back to the western shore.

Absolutely beautiful day out there. Topped the weekend off with a big family fish fry last night. Good stuff!