June 29 We can’t remember a June when the weather had so much effect on the fishing, both offshore and in the freshwater areas. The northcountry is inundated with water, with rivers and streams running bank to bank and lake levels as high as they can get. The northeast wind flows have made offshore fishing hard on many days but when the fishermen did get out, they found some very good fishing for groundfish and some tuna action, as well as a few bluefish. Floating debris from the flooding rivers dumping into Great Bay and other tidal areas, combined with the new moon tides, made for some very tough fishing conditions and dangerous boating.
The saltwater reports noted a real fall-off in larger stripers being caught with a few exceptions. Joe Hutter at Kittery Trading Post’s Fishing Department noted that he wasn’t that worried. “Some of the best fishermen were coming in empty handed. Those who specialize in the larger stripers – especially those who are fishing outside on some of the humps – are doing okay. There were a few reports of schoolie action in Great and Little Bay and the Piscataqua, with some of the catches being counted by the dozens.”
“Mackerel have become scarce as a few bluefish showed up to terrorize these favorite bluefish food. This isn’t an unusual occurrence. The mackerel will remain spotty as bluefish come and go but there are still quite a few around and you may have to be a bit stealthy. Also, both mackerel and pollock should remain available at the Isles of Shoals throughout the season but you should have a boat that is capable of this six or seven mile ride offshore as weather conditions can change quickly, making for some dangerous sea conditions.”
“Those striper fishermen that are live-bait fanatics know that pollock will fish just as well as mackerel with some fishermen preferring them. For pollock, when the bluefish are around, you are best rewarded when fishing near and over pretty heavy structure (when tide allows) that is providing shelter and hiding places for the pollock. Chumming will work at times. Also, trolling jigs or a jig/Sabiki rig combination will attract hits from pollock when nothing else works.”
“The main difference in fishing with live pollock for striper bait verses fishing with live mackerel is that the pollock often won’t swim down like the mackerel most always do. Maybe they’re smarter! A half-ounce or an ounce of sinker should encourage the pollock to get down to where the stripers are more active. Of course, the amount of current where you are drifting the live pollock also has an effect on how much sinker-weight to use.”
“A lot of live bait fishermen swear by using a fishfinder rig. This is simply a sliding sinker attachment that lets a fish take line out without having to drag the sinker, making less spit-out baits that can happen. You use an inline swivel to set the distance of line from sinker to hook. This doesn’t hinder fish from taking unlimited line out through the sliding rig. Usually three to six feet is preferred to keep the rig easy to handle.”
“We’ve talked about the use of circle hooks as a conservation measure many times but we can’t help mentioning this again. Circle hooks almost always allow for a hookup in the fish’s jaw, making for easy removal. How this works is that the design of the hook allows the hooked bait to be pulled out of the fish’s stomach by pressure from the rod and line and this design also makes a jaw hookup almost guaranteed. The key to fishing circle hooks is to NEVER set the hook upon the strike. Just let the fish put pressure on the rod and then slowly raise the rod and start to reel in.”
“Recent studies show that catch and release (hooking) mortality amounts to five times greater striper deaths than the entire commercial, catch and kill striper fishing! So don’t take catch and release fishing with J-type hooks so lightly. They are a deadly method of bait fishing and responsible for much of this huge catch and release striper mortality,” Joe warns.
MAINE: Master Maine Guide Stu Bristol from Lyman reports that the local rivers and streams in his area are too high and dirty to fish right now. “The stretch of the Saco River we love to fish and guide and teach on from Biddeford to the Skelton Dam area are just not fishable and it will take a week or more for these conditions to improve enough to be fishable. But the bite is on around some of our local bass ponds. The weeds are up and the largemouth bass are in them and are hungry. The smallies have dropped down a bit and are around rocky points and rocky areas hunting crawfish. Also, early morning fly fishermen throwing fly rod poppers around the shoreline are having a good time on the smallmouths and an occasional big crappie or blugill.”
“Now is a great time to be fishing the beaches for stripers. They are pretty wary in clear water but with all the onshore winds they are feeding in close along the beaches and rocks. A good bet would be clams for bait, followed by chunk herring or mackerel. Also, live eels at night in those same areas can be very productive.”
This report came to us on Saturday from Craig Bergeron at Saco Bay Tackle: “The rain has finally passed, the sun is shinning and the fish are biting. This past week reminded me of last summer with monsoon rains and brutal thunderstorms every day. Well let’s keep our fingers crossed that the weather settles down a bit.”
“The striper fishing has been very good in Saco Bay the past few days; we have had many calls recently of bass over 40 inches. Fish out around the islands or beaches with live mackerel or pollock for the larger fish.”
“The water in the rivers are still high and dirty from the past weeks rain making it difficult to locate the fish. Our reel repair expert Ashley Dame said the bass were feeding heavily Thursday on mackerel along the Camp Ellis jetty... he said every other cast you had a fish on. Mike Lorrello of South Portland also reported good fishing at dusk around the rock ledges using eels. To fish eel's effectively, you take a 5/0 Gamakatsu livebait hook and start from the bottom jaw go up through the top jaw, then come out one eye. Cast the eel out along the ledges and retrieve very slowly. When you feel a tap or bump lower your rod and give the bass a couple of seconds then set the hook.”
“We should start seeing bluefish anytime now. Capt. Cal Robinson said some of the mackerel he was catching had scrapes on them so you know the blues are close by.”
“The ground fishing has been good on Tantas and Jeffrey's Ledges. One customer fished Northwest Tantas Friday morning and caught his limit of cod using 12 and 20 oz. chrome cod jigs rigged with a teaser fly above (NO BAIT NEEDED). He also caught a half dozen pollock in the 30-inch range. They also hooked a few dogfish but said they were few and far between. GOOD!
“The tuna bite is heating up with the harpoon boats having a banner year, the fishing is the best we have seen in 10 years said one angler. The hot item this season is a 3 or 4 ft. squid bar rigged with Sluggos. Pink or pearl are the hot colors. Troll these guys the same way you would a squid rig about 3 to 5 knots and 50 to 75 yards behind the boat.”
Dave Garcia at Naples Bait in the Sebago Region says the “Bite is on!” Dave fished in the Western Maine Basser’s Tourney at Norway Lake and although he didn’t win, his catch of 11.7 pounds gave him a sixth place finish.
“We had one dead fish and that hurt us as they deduct points for that. The fish was hooked deep and I tried my best but sometime it happens. While I was fishing at Norway, my son Ty was fishing over at Sabbattus Lake in a USA Maine Bass Trail event. He didn’t make it to the money but he did have a nice catch. He missed me as his usual team member,” Dave laughed.
“We’ve got lots of water here. Not just the rivers and streams as the lakes are very high. Although it puts a crimp in the river fishing, the lakes are turned on. I must have hooked at least 40 fish yesterday, mostly all largemouths, as that is what I was targeting. They were in the real deep weed cover. You had to drop a jig and pig right into any opening. If you ran a quick buzzbait across the surface you might get a boilup under the bait. Then you knew a fish was there and if you hopped a frog (artificial bait) into that hole or dropped a jig and pig you’d get an instant take.”
“The togue (lake trout) fishing over at Sebago remains great. With the water temperatures staying cool, the fish haven’t dropped into the real deep water yet and are really hitting well.”
“Long Lake here and Pleasant Lake in Casco have seen the usual white perch fishing starting around 7:30 in the evening. Both off the docks and in boats, it’s a bobber and worm or small spinner fishery. We’ve also seen quite a few hornpout fishermen over at Muddy River fishing at night. The ‘pout there average between eight and twelve inches.”
“One trick my uncle showed me when I was a kid was how easy it was to unhook a ‘pout, which most people have a hard time doing. All we had to do was to take a stick about a half-inch around and stick it into the mouth, twirl the stick a couple times and the hook would fall right out! We did the twirling in a pail so the fish would fall into the pail.” (This little trick has motivated this writer to maybe take up ‘pouting again.)
“We’ve had some great lake trout stories,” reports Greg Cutting at Jordan’s Store in East Sebago. One couple came in here with fish of over 16 pounds and one of over 12 pounds. This guy fishes with mostly Flatfish and Quickfish (a clone of Flatfish) and drags them right along bottom. We sent another group out with fishing guide Carl Boise. They had a day of around 40 fish. Most of them were in the three to four pound range with a couple of six and seven pounders.”
“Right now a fellow just came in from fishing right out front here. He’d caught 13 lakers in just a couple of hours. With the water temperatures the fish seem to be all over the place anywhere from 20 feet down to bottom. And there’s been some pretty nice salmon caught – not a lot but the last one in here was 23 inches long and weighed over four pounds. In spite of the weather, we’re seeing plenty of action.”
Ken at River’s Edge Sports in Oquossoc in the Rangeley Lakes Region was out early in this morning on Rangeley Lake with his boss Jerry. They caught one salmon and six brook trout. “Not really big but good action. Jerry had caught a couple of really nice salmon a couple days ago. One was three pounds, twelve ounces while the other was over four pounds. He caught both of them on a Berkeley Gulp (smelt) minnow. He rigs them with a needle just like a sewed-on shiner and it works pretty well for him. He was fishing about 30 feet down.”
“We’ve got a lot of water here, way more than we need! The rivers are too high to fish and the dams are pushing a lot of water downstream. 3,200 cfs (cubic feet per second!) at Middle Dam and 2,600 cfs at Upper Dam. It will be a week or more before those places are fishable,” he ended.
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Captain Jamie Sargent at Dover Marine’s Sport Shop walks the walk and he can also talk the talk. Here’s his report for this week. “This '09 season is shaping up with just as much character as last year. An early push of bluefish is already chopping up our inshore bait supplies and spurring a good chunk bite along the coast.”
“I've heard many reports of 35-45” bass picking up mackerel chunks in Rye, Kittery and York. The Piscataqua is loaded with 25-35” fish that are blitzing on young-of-the-year alewives and shad with extra-hot fishing on overcast days. Small poppers, stick-baits, jigs and Sluggos are catching schoolies all day – just look for the terns and gulls.”
“School tuna have been banging on these little baits as well. Spin fishers are having a hard time hooking up but the fly fisherman are hooking some good numbers of juvie bluefins on small patterns and I did recently hear that the Stellwagon fish started hitting white Sluggos again. There have been many reports of very small tunas spotted from Boone Island Ledge, Isles of Shoals and Stellwagon which is promising news for the light tackle crowd and our future tuna seasons.”
At Suds-n-Soda Sports in Greenland, Jason MacKenzie reports that the weather hadn’t dampened the shoppers and in fact said it may have helped, but a lot of the people that like to go offshore for groundfish and tuna hadn’t been going.
“No problem for the shore fishing and that has been pretty good, especially for flounder around Rye Harbor. And in the Piscataqua and Great and Little Bays, there’s been quite a lot of fishing pressure but the high tides and storms are moving a lot of floating junk around and it makes boating hard. Not a lot of big fish entered yet in our derby but it’s started. And we seldom see any amount of freshwater anglers coming in here lately.”
“The water levels around here are not just affecting the rivers and streams. It’s up over the banks at Barbados Pond,” reports George Taylor at Taylor’s Trading Post in Madbury. “The reservoir here (Madbury) is still fishing well for both crappie and bass and some of the other local bass ponds are also doing well especially Swains in Barrington and Baxter in Rochester.”
“Some of our striper fishermen that fish mostly off the bridges are still doing well and are still able to catch an occasional herring for bait. The Dover/Eliot Bridge has had a good season so far but we’re not hearing much about the Dover Point Bridge. Flounder fishing reports are still quite positive. It sure seems like at least locally, we’re seeing a rebound in flounder populations. York River, off the rocks and beaches at Rye Harbor as well as boat fishing at Little Harbor and the Back Channel. Hampton is also reporting some good flounder both outside the harbor in inside.”
Mark Beauchesne, New Hampshire Fish and Game’s Marketing and Promotions Coordinator sends us this report: “That silver lining is there, you just have to endure some rain to find it. Like the rest of you, the long stretch of rain has limited my outings. But, I still got out enough to keep from getting the shakes. The shakes happen when I go more than five days without fishing.”
“Lucky for me, I invested in a new set of rain gear. The new suit is fabulous. I can't name brands or manufacturers, but I can tell you it's made from Tyvek.”
“Over the past month I've been fishing from my kayak more than ever. The gear I bring on the kayak is what I would call simple: I have two spinning rods loaded with 4-pound test braid and my 3-weight fly rod. I have a small, flat tackle box for my plastic grubs and jigs. A smaller box is used for my flies. In that box are dry flies, tiny cork poppers, streamers and some beadhead flies.”
“I've also been getting really good at spotting fish. Flat, calm, rainy days provide the best opportunity for ‘sight fishing’ bluegills. I still wear my hat and polarized sunglasses, even on rainy days. This helps cut the glare on the water. In low-light conditions like we've enjoyed over the past two weeks, the bluegills become very comfortable. Instead of hiding in the vegetation, they go on the hunt for insects and newly hatched fish of all kinds.”
“Sight fishing these schools takes some stealth and accurate casting. What does a school look like? Well, you need to take notice of the water surface. When things are really good and the fish are on the hunt, you will notice what is called a ‘push,’ a kind of wake created by a school moving near the surface. The term push is used by saltwater flats anglers. With a push, the fish are moving fairly fast; when you see one, try casting well ahead of the school.”
“When the fish are ‘finning’ on the surface, you can bet they are feeding on insects. Typically what I look for is a group of fins on the surface. Fishing a fly is recommended here. A small nymph or emerger will be quickly eaten; or small soft plastic grubs on the lightest jighead you can find. I like to ‘swim’ the jig slowly at the surface while occasionally adding a pause along the way.”
“Bluegills are not the only panfish that will work the surface like this. Black crappies are notorious for feeding this way. In fact, I noticed the crappies exhibiting this behavior before I noticed the bluegills.”
“Between raindrops, friends and I have been working over the largemouth bass. The spawn is long over, and these fish are into their summer patterns. A soft plastic crayfish imitation fished in the stumps on Hopkinton-Everett Reservoir (AKA Stump Field) has been producing high-quality fish.”
“Now that the vegetation is up on our ponds, I have been working this crayfish and wacky worms in and along the weed lines. The smallmouth bass are also in full summer pattern, with a few fish still hanging around their redds (nests). Memorable smallmouth fishing happened for me in the middle of the month – I found the big ones! While others were working the shallow spawning flats, I fished in 10-15 foot depths. The key was finding a concentration of large boulders. These hungry fish were no match for spinner bait. The jig and grub was just as hot. We managed a few fish with the Super Fluke, worked slow, giving the bait time to sink deeper. A light twitch of the rod tip as we retrieved the bait produced the most strikes.”
“I'll be straight with you – I have not been trout fishing since May. But, my good friend Angus tells me the he's having the best season ever. Angus tells me there are still plenty of salmon in the upper Connecticut River. The flows have been ideal to keep the salmon around, he tells me. Now, something big happens in the next few weeks that no one should miss: the ‘hex’ hatch is just around the corner and so is the alderfly hatch on the Androscoggin River. The hex happens on ponds and slower moving rivers. This monster mayfly brings up the big ones. The alderfly provides a huge bounty for the fish on the ‘Andro.’”
“With sunny skies ahead of us and water temps that have stayed pretty cool, the fishing over the next three weeks will be at its peak. You have no choice, go fishing.”
Alan Nute at AJ’s Bait and Tackle in Meredith had some pretty good luck fishing last week. We had called him and were told, “Alan is in New York fishing.”
Well, that sounded just like he was in New York fishing, so when I asked him how he did, his answer was “Oh, about $30,000!”
And he wasn’t kidding. Alan and friends had been fishing in the Lake Champlain International Tourney, more commonly referred to as the LCI. They swept the big fish contest with a huge landlocked salmon and an equally big lake trout. The salmon weighed 9.41 pounds (28 inches) while the laker weighed 11.87 pounds (31.5 inches). This won the crew a boat motor and trailer package and other goodies to the tune of over thirty thousand US dollars!
The salmon was caught on a #61 Gun while the laker took a silver and brass similar spoon in the four inch size. The salmon was hooked at the 40-foot depth while the laker was caught right on bottom in deeper water. For the laker fishing Alan said that they were trolling about one mile an hour and were using leadcore line, held by hand and jerking the lure just off bottom.
“You couldn’t get away with fishing like that here as there is so much rubble on the bottom but up there it was no problem. We caught several other big lakers in the ten pound range using this technique.”
“Things are picking up locally. The thermocline is starting to set up around 28 feet down and the salmon, rainbows and lakers are starting to become more active with our Fire Fly and White Perch Fly starting to work well. Also, anything in orange or mixture of orange seems to be key right now.”
Reports from the New Hampshire’s Northcountry are about too much water in both the rivers and streams and in some of the ponds and lakes as well, but fishing the ponds and lakes is still a viable thing with some hatches coming off and at Tall Timber Lodge on Back Lake in Pittsburg, Cindy Caron Howe is anticipating the start of the exciting “hex hatch” any time now. “It’s a Fourth of July thing and that hatch can set off some serious fireworks for some of the fly fishermen around here.”
MASSACHUSETTS: Kay Moulton at Surfland on Plum Island says there are plenty of fish there. Lots of stripers and a few bluefish. The blues are mostly in Plum Island Sound and the small, three to four pounders. Here the stripers on the flats are very wary during the daytime but the live eel guys are catching some big ones at night. Flounders continue to do well both from shore and boats, and a huge yellowtail flounder was caught last week. No reports of fluke yet, have you heard of any?” (We wish we had, as they are one of our favorites but no word yet.)
Pete Santini at Fishing FINatics in Everett says that the stripers are going nuts on the Santini Tube-n-Worm rig just about everywhere in Boston Harbor. “All colors seem to be hot. Faun Bar, Lovells, Spectacle, Georges, Deer Islands and off Nahant Beach with a few bluefish mixed in. Blues off the Rte 99 bridge. Bass are also hitting poppers at the Amelia Earhart Dam and at the North End Bridge. Flounders have moved in tight to the piers at Charlestown behind the Schrafts building (for the first time in years) and at Georges and Deer Island along with quite a few black seabass and tautog.”
“The tuna have put on quite a show at Stellwagon’s Northwest Corner and at Peaked Hill. Pink and white Sluggos and floating squid bars. The Sluggos are rigged single, what we call the Stellwagon Sluggo that we rig specially so they work correctly with snelled hooks and proper terminal gear.”
“Barry Gibson and I fished with Captain Chuck Distefano on the Skip-a-Dory Charter Boat and had quite a mixed catch. We caught our limits of flounder, a lot of stripers and then went out on Stellwagon and caught cod and haddock but we didn’t get a hookup on tuna but had a few lookers,” Pete ended.
Because of the inherent time restrictions of gathering fresh, up-to-date information, editing and producing this report in a timely manner, occasional errors or marginal information may slip by us. We try our hardest to provide accurate information. We urge readers to use this report as a tool to increase their fishing pleasure and not to rely on as their sole resource. First or second hand information is offered by fishing guides, commercial fishing charters or party boats, bait and tackle dealers, well known successful anglers and state and federal fisheries and natural resource law enforcement officials. We also welcome and use reports forwarded to us by fishermen that use this report. (Thank you, Dick Pinney Kittery Trading Post Fishing Report Editor.)
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