Forgive  my delays on an update.  Had to go through process of changing blog servers etc.   Also lost last years archived posts but kept some older ones up for you to check out.

As  some of you keeping watch may know, this Spring has been a tough go on the Chesapeake.   I am usually reporting on our fishing ventures on the Susquehanna Flats this time of year, but this season was a bust.   Large amounts of runoff  on the river brought extreme river flows,  as high as 316,000 cfs, and  ruined the season.   The water on the flats as of today is still muddy and fishing was just impossible.   Thanks to all of you who booked and have been flexible with re-scheduling.

Good news is that the Striper fishing has picked up for us a little further down the bay.  We have been leaving from Kent Island and fishing surrounding waters.  In the past few days we have been catching lots of schoolie size fish on both flies and lures.  Lots of fish in the 18 to 22 inch range and  a shot at  some larger fish each day.  We landed a decent  32 inch fish  on a recent trip and had a handful of 24 inchers.   The fishing should only continue to improve the next week or so.

I’m in the process of upgrading my blogging software. I sincerely apologize for any delay in postings.

For those checking in often, sorry that I have not posted updates for the last month.  Even us fishing guides get consumed with life on occasion, and I have been in the process of renovating a 150 year old farm house into my home.  It has consumed nearly all of my free time outside of fishing.  Feel free to shoot mean a call or e-mail anytime you want to talk fishing.

Of course, we have been fishing many trips over the course of the fall on the Chesapeake Bay and Gunpowder River.  I have beeen making efforts all this month to get in some striper fishing in the ocean, hoping for some more of the great success we had last year.  The weather, however has not been helping our cause. I am sitting in Ocean City , MD now in 30 kt winds and torrential rain which is managing to wipe out several more fishing days here on the Maryland coast.

The  rain has been good for the fishing and water flows on the Gunpowder River.  With Prettyboy Reservoir full, we can figure on good constant water flows on the Gunpowder. This always makes for more consistent fishing.  Favorite winter techniques are nymphing with dropper rigs and small nymphs, as well as keeping an eye out for any of our winter hatches.  Midges, blackfies, and winter stoneflies can all be found hatching on the river in the next few months. 

We have been graced with good water flows and a full reservoir for the last few months on the Gunpowder.  Adding to this we have had the best Trico mayfly hatch the river has ever seen which lasted through August has continued through September. The hatch is present throughout the river and fish canbe found rising to the tiny mayflies in the early morning hours nearly every day. The fishing is challenging, but skilled and patient anglers can really catch some fish if they put the time and effort in.

 Tricos are small, black or grey bodied mayflies and are easily recognized as they swarm in large bunches above the stream and fly with an erratic motion.  The wings look like tiny mirrors on the water surface as flies who have just hatched float downstream struggling to escape into the air.  Of course, the trout take full advantage of the easy meal.   The tough part is imitating such a small bug and landing a fish on the necessary 7 or 8 x tippets. 

Many fish can be fooled on dry flies. I like patterns in size 20 to 22 with black or gray sparsely tied bodies and light grey hackles or cdc for a wing. I do well on a simple reversed hackle pattern with black dubbing and and a light dun hackle.  I also like simple cluster patterns like a griffith’s gnat.  Midge pupa patterns in black or grey also work well during the hatch if fished under a short indicator.

Remember folks, we’re fishing on the Gunpowder, not every trout is a 18 to 20″ fish.  The Gunpowder is unique on the east coast for it’s large numbers of streambred brown trout.  The average trout you will catch on the stream is 8 to 12″.  There are , however, many more 15+ ” trout in the river than most realize.  Good anglers learn that catching larger fish comes with altering techniques, being persistent,  and targeting big fish lies consistently.  I landed a 21″ brown this Spring, my best in a few years, while fishing nothing more than a pair of bead head pheasant tails.  We had a fish on one trip this week which would have went 20+, but broke him off.  Anyway, don’t be discouraged if you don’t hang a big fish every trip out.  We are lucky to have such an exceptional tailwater fishery to fish year round.

The fishing should only get better as fall arrives and the browns take on their brilliant spawning colors.  I hope to see you out fishing on the stream soon.  Jeff

Heres the skinny from the coast.  We’ve been fishing our usual haunts in the bays and inshore waters around Ocean City this month. Fishing has been pretty typical of summer fishing in Marylands coastal waters.  Fish species like summer flounder and hardheads are in the bays in good numbers, stripers are a regular catch near the bridges and jetties and in the inlets.  Snapper bluefish can be seen chasing bait on strong tides and we’ve even seen a few sea trout in the mix the last few weeks. 

Fly fisherman have a good shot at all of these fish species when fishing the coastal bays.  Clean water and good tides help your chances of course, and when you pair these with the low light and traffic around dusk and dawn your chances at catching fish are pretty good. 

Most of the stripers we have caught in recent weeks have been in the 20 to 26 inch range. We have been fishing our staple deep sinking lines with a variety of flies.  We have seen some decent flounder, like the 19 incher below that fell for a clouser minnow fished in 9 feet of water.

We look forward to fall as we start catching some of the stripers migrating south from their summer home on the New England Coast.  We had great striper fishing last fall with the best of the fishing being in November and early December.

Gunpowder River Summer Trout Fishing

When not fishing the coastal bays I spend much of my summer guiding trips for trout on the Gunpowder River.  The Gunpowder has gotten some great press recently, listed as one of the top tailwater trout streams in the nation in several fly fishing periodicals.  Though a little bias, I couldn’t agree more.   Very few other streams in the mid-Atlantic area offer the unique fishing for streambred trout that the Gunpowder offers.

 Summer on the Gunpowder makes for some great fishing.  We have great caddis hatches inthe mornings along many stretches of the stream, and fish are eager to take a well presented dry.  This past week on several trips we have landed many good fish on various caddis patterns fished in the riffles.  Tiny Trico mayflies have also become a summer staple on the river, and fisherman will often find trout sipping them from the surface in the long glassy glides along the stream. 

If you fall short fishing caddis and tricos, give some big buggy terrestrials a try.  A foam beetle or hopper fished near the bank is often a sure bet .  Don’t be afraid to cast into some of the ”deep rough” as I call it an tuck your fly right up against a fallen tree or logpile.  You can bet there is a trout nearby on the Gunpowder.

We have been doing lots of flounder fishing lately in the bays and inshore waters around Ocean City, MD.  Flounder are always a crowd pleaser and lots of folks like to get out fishing for them while on vacation in the area.  We target flounder in with using variety of fishing techniques throughout the summer.  One of the  most popular ways to fish for them is drift fishing with a fishfinder style rig and live bait. This incorporates a weight on a slide above a barrel swivel with about 18 inches of 30 lb leader. We use a variety of live baits from minnows to spot, bunker, mullet  and others.   The bait of choice varies by the time of year.

This week we have been doing alot of old school flounder fishing.  That is drifting with minnows during good periods of tide  in clean water.  The fishing been quite good, though legal fish are tough to catch consistently in good numbers with the new size limits set at 17 1/2 inches.

Ben and Joe Ault caught these nice flounder this morning while fishing in Sinepuxent Bay with bunker and minnows.  The trick to the flounder fishing of late has been to find the cleanest water possible.  The best bite seems to be on the start of the outgoing tide, but we have been catching fish on both tides.

Will probablly be doing more of the same for the next week or so on the boat. I’ll keep you posted.

Gunpowder River Quick Update

I did fish several trips over the past weekend on the Gunpowder River.   Stream flows are good, around 75cfs and stream temps are cold, in the high 50’s.  There was a pretty steady morning caddis hatch on Friday, and fish in the riffles fell easily for a size 16 x-caddis in olive.  Fish were also moving great for a variety of terrestrial patterns fished near the banks and around logs and structure.  One of the best patterns we fished was a foam hopper in olive and tan , and a foam beetle worked good too in black with green legs.  

Here’s a shot of a local guide’s well stocked terrestrial box. Good Fishing!

This week we have seen some great fishing in the Assawoman and Sinepuxent Bays.  Clean water and great weather conditions have sparked the flounder bite in the bays.  The flounder fishing has been great in many locations using a variety of techniques.  There has been a decent striper bite on the jetties also, especially in the late evenings and early mornings on good tides.  Live bait has been a good bet when targeting the stripers, but lures and flies have taken fish too in recent trips.  The wreck fishing continues to be pretty good with some nice tautog and sea bass showing up regularly.

I hope to get some more photos posted soon and keep you up to date on the fishing.  Jeff

The summer season is in now in full swing on the Maryland coast and we have been busy fishing in the coastal bays and inshore waters  out of Ocean City , MD.  The wind has had a way of blowing an awful lot all Spring and has continued blowing on into the early summer pretty regularly.  We have had to take full advantage of the days we get when we have had good water conditions and manageable winds.  Off colorwater has been an issuein the coastal bays all week , making the flounder fishing tough to say the least.  Though we had some good success last week cacthing some nice flounders, this week we spent most of the time fishing on near shore wrecks and reef sites for tautog and sea bass.

The tautog bite has been great, and we caught some good ones this week up to 10 lbs, and the fishing was steady. We used sand fleas and crabs for bait, fished onconventional rods rigged with 50 lb braid.  The fishing was good Tuesday and Thursday, and I hope we will see some more good fishing this week.

Ocean City Update May 20

 It’s that time of year again, and I have made my annual migration to Ocean City, MD for a summer of fishing trips on the Maryland coast.  Each year we fish for a variety of species along in the coastal bays and inshore waters of the Atlantic Ocean.  Some of our common target species are stripers , bluefish, sea trout, flounder, tautog, and sea bass among others.   

We began fishing over the weekend with hopes to catch some stripers, blues, and shad on the fly.  These fish are common fly rod targets in the back bays  each spring. But, as is fishing, the weather put a damper on those plans as we were dealt 20 to 30 kt winds which have continued blowing all week.   We adapted our techiniques an went fishing for flounder in the South Bay for flounder where we the water remained clear and fishable despite the wind.  We managed to land some nice flounder fishing jigs and fishfinder rigs along channel edges.  The flounder fishing has continued to be pretty good all week. 

The weather is set to improve as the week moves on into the holiday weekend as should he fishing conditions.  The tautog bite has been great on the near shore wrecks and I hope to take advantage of this on some of the next few trips.  Cleaner water and less wind will offer some fly rod fishing also.  I’ll keep you posted.

Gunpowder River Fly Fishing Update

Finally, we have some good water flows in the Gunpowder due to spillover at the Prettyboy Reservoir Dam.  And imagine that, the trout fishing has been awesome.  We have seen good hatches of caddis for the last week along the river.  The fish have been anxious to take the bugs, most of which are olive bodied in a size 16.  They work on the dead drift or on the skitter.  Here are a few shots of some fish we took on Friday while fishing caddis near the dam.

Sulfurs have started hatching also and offered even more good dry fly fishing.  Look for both the sulfurs and caddis in and near the riffles throughout the stream.  Pick up some of our favorite local fly patterns at the Backwater Angler fly shop in Monkton.

Get out there and fish!  Now is the time. Leave work and worry behind for the day.  I fished the my last 2 trips on the Gunpowder above Falls Rd. during the week her in May.  We caught fish steady both days and never saw another angler.  Thats nuts!  Stream flows are at 120 as of today, perfect for fishing.

May 9

The catch and release fishing season on the Susquehanna Flats comes to a close today.  The week long season extension was well worth it as we saw some really good fishing early in the week.  We had a good fly rod bite over the weekend catching some teenage size fish on the east end of flats.  Gray/white and Chartreuse /white half and halfs worked good fished on sinking lines in 7 to 10 feet of water. We caught a good number of teenage size fish to 26 inches with an occasional big fish bite.

A great topwater bite turned on Monday on top of the flats, and we had some of the best fishing of the season early in the week.  We caught some beautiful stripers fishing fly rod poppers and big plugs on the spinning rods.  We landed numerous fish in the 20 to 30 lb range and several over 30 our best weighing in at 34 lbs. Of course there are always those that got away,  and I watched a few truly huge fish manage to shake the hook this week.

The Susquehanna Flats is an unpredicatable fishery by nature, one day you burn them,  the next you struggle for a bite.  Water conditions and varying early Spring weather always makes the fishing an adventure.  For those of you who have caught it at it’s best the reward of a 30lb+ striper exploding on a topwater fly or lure in 3 feet of water is a reward worth fishing for.

Thanks to everyone who gave it a shot this Spring.  Look forward to seeing you again next year.