Josenhans Fly Fishing Blog

 

We had quite the variety last week while fishing both the Big and Little Choptank rivers. Evening shallow water trips produced good popper fishing for rockfish near the mouth of the Little Choptank, while during the afternoon we were kept busy with surface feeding bluefish and stripers. One day, we even found some white perch eager to please on ultra light gear while casting beetle spin lures along the shoreline of the Choptank. Speckled trout are making a showing down in Tangier Sound and that is where I’ll be heading next week. The speck fishing should get better as September drags on..

 

Last Wednesday, Bernie Kemp and his lovely wife Susan fished with me out of Madison with the goal of some skinny-water popper action right before dark. Until then, it was off to Sharps Island flats to chase schools of breaking blues and rockfish. The action was sporadic, but we did find a few schools that held our attention while waiting for the sun to creep lower on the horizon. Around 6:00 P.M. after having our fill of the run-and-gun action with the fickle blues it was off to the shallows. It was just after 7:00 P.M. when, out-of-the-blue, we had the first blow-up. We landed a few stripers here and there until, at the peak of the action, Susan was getting hits on nearly every cast. No monsters came to the boat but both Bernie and Susan managed to land rock to 23 inches, all on Stillwater Smack’it! poppers. Then, like someone flipped a switch, the action stopped abruptly at 7:55. That’s been the story for these shallow water fish of late. You get perhaps an hour of adrenaline pumping action followed by silence. Alas, the nature of summer topwater.

 

Friday, I had a morning trip in the same area with John Daw and Jim Smith and their two grown sons. It seemed the closer we got to the fishing grounds the harder the wind blew. A nor’easter was kicking up a surf in the shallows that made it a chore to keep the poppers from skipping wave-top to wave-top. It failed to help the water clarity situation as well. As wind and tide were working together with the drift, it made it necessary to repeatedly anchor over previously productive spots. The fishing was sporadic, however the guys did manage to catch a few nice fish, and all told we had maybe ten to twelve blow-ups on poppers. We explored some additional shoreline structure in the immediate area and managed to scare up some schoolie stripers here and there. It was a fun morning and the guys learned a lot about the local area. The wind died to nothing as we ended the trip. Doesn’t it always..