Running 2023 Small Point to Port Clyde, ME VAL Area 4, Fishing Reports

[Roccus7]

Spooks & Slurping Stripers - No Mulligans

 

Although it pains me, I've added to Spooks to the amory, X-Rap Surface (Herring) and a Rebel Jumping Minnow (Bone). This morning they demonstrated their advantages and disadvantages. The bite started early in the flood, just about the time I could get my boat going without "cleaning" the prop and skeg. There were large groups of fish feeding on small sandeels, subtly breaking the surface all over. After 3 straight casts through the feeding fish with nary a look at my Blueflash Striper Strike, I grabbed the Jumping Minnow and hooked up after missing a few because of short hits and boated a 23" fish. I quickly nailed a 24" fish, but then the bite died. Went off to one of my "Sacred Spots" only to practice casting with every lure known to man with only 1 follow. Was disgusted and started heading back to the barn.

Just as I was ready to make my final approach to my dock float I noticed that the fish were active again in the same area as earlier. Went down there and proceeded to make cast after cast alternating between the Jumping Minnow, the X-Rap and the Creek Chub. Only the 2 spooks elicited any sort of interest, but no substantial hookups. The weakness of the floating lures is that you don't get that second chance of stopping you retrieve if a fish swirls around it to slurp it in. This is deadly with the Creek Chub since it starts to sink the instant you stop your retrieve, and usually the time at which the striper nails them.

This went on for a good 15 minutes and I was really starting to loose my temper, but then reasoned since the fish were feeding on small sand eels, maybe a Chrome Striper Strike was the best choice. Turned out that was the ticket, and I ended my suffering with a beautiful 30", which needed a Mulligan to hook; it hit the plug after I stopped the retrieve immediately following the initial swirl around it. I followed this fish with 4 more including 2, 28" fish, all the fish make me take Mulligans to get them to strike.

[petespeak]

My stretch of Midcoast open beach has clouds of tiny sand eels washing over open sandbars into a deep channel running along the beach. The river mouth had a black band of baby sand eels hugging the shore and moving with the tide. Macks will be hot on their tail by tonight.  Periods of daytime bird action: mini blitzes pop up and disappear. Seagulls working suggests larger bait is active. Diving terns tell you the bait is small and it's time to break out the teaser rigs and casting eggs: One hook, no bait is the rule right now where I fish: casting eggs with 2 inch silver teaser flies kicking butt with the sub-slot fish. White Super Strike heavy needle with pink dressed siwash hook tail found bigger fish in the depressions on the bar shielded from the fast sweeping current in waist deep water over two humndred yards out on the bar. Scary current. Black Darter had several follows, but Blurple Sluggo cut-off tails with 1/2 once jigs did well once the tide topped off and the water calmed for a bit: Best action close to beach in the trenches...smallest skinny profile baits, match color to brightest color on the horizon at that time. Lures that could stay down a foot or two worked best...ironically best hit came on a ghost Sebile Magic Swimmer with inline spinner on the tail in place of the hook. The spinner cancels out much of the side to side wiggling but slow retrieved up top with the spinner slapping the water like a tail, you can work  it like a lipped swimmer: slow-slow-slow, carving a deep ripple across the surface. Yozuri Mag Darters have even greater action when rigged with a tail spinner. Tonight will be epic: tide, moon, water temp, barometrics, lots of bait: everything lines up around midnight. Tomorrow not as good but also should be great, just an or so hour later. Couldn't go this afternoon, but I'll bet the fish farm that bass are crashing those sand eels right this second. Thirty years of fishing my stretch of mid-coast tells me that teaser rigs and hookless poppers(3 inch, green Creek Chub)  will work well during twilight hours tonight. As always, big bait at midnight catches the biggest bass when they are present. My alarms are screaming that tonight they will ride into our area on this wave of warm water from the east. We are lucky today: if the wind were to blow west when (and if) these big cows are moving north, the warm water gets blown out to sea and the bass will follow the bait offshore. I've seen years when the first wave of the biggest fish stay off shore. I've seen them bypass Casco altogether and head up into the Sheepscott system. Location location location...local knowledge is super important up here. 

 

Edited June 17 by petespeak

[Roccus7]

An Existential Question and a 2 Mulligan Catch

It's right up there with, "Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved." What would be that, well in my limited world, "Is it better to use a surface lure on a very calm day to see every instance of a fish having interest in your lure?" or "Is it better off to use a subsurface lure and fly blind??"

 

Even though it can be a major source of agita, and makes me want to have a bottle of Brioschi on the boat, I'll opt to use the popper because larger fish have been in 'da hood and their presence can often only be detected by a HUGE V Wake following a topwater, like this AM. I was preparing to go to a new spot when I had multiple massive V wakes. Even with my gastric pH plummeting, I changed up popper color & tail hook combination, going from a standard Blue Flash Striper Strike to a Metallic one with a "Chartreuse Caboose", a Siwash tied with bright green faux bucktail.

 

Tossed the plug out to an area where I saw some minor surface disturbance and the glassine surface erupted with a major swirl, but no hit. The auto "Mulligan" sequence engaged and after 2 sequences, I was fast onto a beautiful 30" fish...

[Pagoo]

Was only able to get out for a few casts from shore midday on Sunday but managed to land 2 nice fish on a white 8" beast fly.

 

Looking forward to getting up for an extended stay around the 4th of July and getting after them early in the morning. Seeing lots of Mackerel off the dock and the Pogie boats have started showing up in our bay.

[Roccus7]

Poseidon is one SOB, he's upped the local Whack-A-Mole game by adding thick fog!!

 

 

[Ryan892021]

Hey guys kinda of shot in the dark but anyone had any luck out on the boat?fished double light house to the cliff house all morning with no luck dropping live macs lures ect …  first time out here any help would be greatly Appreciated thanks !!! 

[petespeak]

2 hours ago, Roccus7 said:

Poseidon is one SOB, he's upped the local Whack-A-Mole game by adding thick fog!!

 

 

Last week, high tide, big water, heavy fog in the dark am. White capped current cut a deep channel running south. Shorebreak throwing throwing foam, and I'm pinned up against the 3 foot sandwall with a big fish thrashing at the end of my line. Moon shadow filtered through the thickening fog: an eerie ghostlight lit the beach, transforming a storm-tossed pile of driftwood into a dinosaur boneyard that rose overhead. Massive twisted shapes, released from their sandy graves by the rushing seas...those ancient remains of monstrous tree trunks and root stumps rolled up and down in the wash: sweeping branches like fractured limbs reached for my arms, but a quick timberman's dance carried me up and over the trunk and I horsed in a 30ish inch bass that fell for a sinking needle bullet. Conditions were bad enough, but Jurassic State Park was not my initial destination.

Edited June 23 by petespeak

[Roccus7]

19 hours ago, Roccus7 said:

Poseidon is one SOB, he's upped the local Whack-A-Mole game by adding thick fog!!

 

 

 

Website nuts, yesterday morning, couldn't get the details in.  I fished in the fog having to use "sound" to get on the pods of feeding fish, what a PITA.  Did scratch out 6 fish, including this one on a Robert Skinner, the elder and more experienced of the Long Island's Skinner brothers, provided Chartreuse siwash on the tail... 

Edited June 24 by Roccus7

[Fury]

Late to the party this year.  Finally got on the board this evening.  Between building a house here in Waldoboro and a recent health scare, fishing has been light.  I was casting a new lure while watching a boat in the distance full of kids landing fish on what I guess were live macs.  

This evening I landed my seasonal first on my best producing topwater lure here in Midcoast - Red head/white Cotton Cordell Pencil Popper with some bbs for sound.  Outside of chunk/live macks, I have caught most of my fish on the Cotton over the last 20 years.  Granted, I am limited in what I can do from shore.

I started with a rather expensive hand made Bunker colored cedar plug with a white trailer.  Zero hits.  I decided to pull out the $8, rusty old faithful... and first cast - BAM!  Like every other fish on the rocks in this particular spot near the mouth of the Damariscotta, they hit just feet from shore on the retrieve.  Always a great surprise.

Foggy evening.  Just a little bit of wind.  Catching that fish melted a ton of stress.  6 more weeks and we get into our new place, finally.  What a blessing to live around here.  Tight lines everyone

[Roccus7]

Been fishing sparingly as the Granddaughters with their Caretakers are visiting.  I took out one Caretaker, my son, in the fog Saturday evening.  Nothing like using sound to find feeding fish in thick fog.  We did well, catching 14 of the feistiest 26" fish I've ever seen.  At least 4 or 5 times I thought one of us had a keeper by virtue of long, determined runs.  Guess the water temperature constantly above 60°F has something to do with their activity.

 

The fog has been a real Debbie Downer though.  Don't think I've ever used radar in my harbor while fishing...

[Roccus7]

 

Today My Admiral and my son's Admiral decided it was Mani/Pedi time and we would watch the granddaughters so we took them out in the boat to go fishing of course in the late AM.  The birds were milling around looking for action so I kinda plunked the boat in the middle of the "Milling Flock" and my son quickly connected with a 28" fish, nice start.  We continued to play "Guess Where" for another hour with a few massive swirls and one hit that broke off a hook of a treble, but nothing boated with the exception of a seagull, oh joy, that was quickly released.

 

At dead low, which wasn't a very low one, I noticed diving terns over bait and a few boils in a very shallow part of the river, which I figured to be less than 2' deep.  At that point the breeze was away from those flats and the tide was coming in so I figure, WTH even if a do get stuck we'd be safe, and son wanted daughters to crank in a rat bass.  He soon hooked a 22" fish that the 8 year old cranked part way in.  At that point I noticed that the hook on that plug needed replacement, so I handed him my rod so I could work on that.  Then there were gulls wheeling around which meant bigger bait and bigger fish, but with 1.7' feet of water, it barely passed any noticed.  Suddenly my son hooked up with a fish that looked small as it greyhounded after it hit, but then we started to really wonder what was going on as this fish took off on a couple of extensive runs on my relatively tight drag. 

 

As we were still convinced it was a smaller fish based on the visual, the rod got passed between the 8 and 5 year old granddaughters; the 3 year old wanted no part of it.  When the fish got close to the boat my son commented, "Dad this IS a big fish" and I looked over the side at a very respectable fish estimated to be close to the upper end of the slot.  He took control of the rod while I grabbed the net, putting it under a 30" beauty.  So a total of 3 fish today, 2 of them slots for 2 hours of fishing in the middle of the day no more than 0.3 nmi from "the barn", not a bad way to spend some time with your son and granddaughters...

 

[Roccus7]

Agita Fishing:

 

The combination of visiting family, fog and extreme low tides around dawn have crimped by style as of late, and the first item will continue to do so until well into next week, BUT there have been some trips over the past 4 days, with agita being the key word, with the bass providing most of the heart burn.  The local fishing has devolved into Whack-A-Mole: Jedi Master Level, that being quick surface blitzes around the harbor, which isn't too big a deal because normally, one can predict some of the blitzes based on structure and when you get into one, every cast produces fishy interest and usually a strike.

 

Well the Striper Union has conspired to drive all of us locals absolutely nuts by totally ignoring structure and historic patterns for these blitzes, along with added absolute lockjaw during them.  Additionally, Mother Nature has sprinkled in extreme fog which makes finding these blitzes not for the hearing impaired, and nixing the option of fishing other areas out of the local estuary. 

 

Regardless, the fishing must continue and over the past 5 days I've gotten out for 3 "quickies" and caught 10 fish, most 23-26", along with a real 19" youngster.  Poppers have gotten the lion's share of these, Finn-S totally ignored and SP Minnows usually ignored with 1 exception.  There's nothing more infuriating than having 10 consecutive casts that are right in the middle of feeding fish being totally ignored, but that's been SOP this year.  Think I'll have to get "the blue bottle" aboard the boat...

 

 

[RAW]

The only thing working for me / but slow action has been whitehead bucktails tipped with Yum black scented twister tail dragged slowly , paused , repeat on sand near jetties. Only for a few hours early am before the crowds. Fish are smaller, one was probably 14”. All the rains have given me roof leaks from hell. 

[Roccus7]

This morning I had a very Maine rodent encounter, a porcupine leading me down the path down to the boat. Normally I shoot these on sight, but it was way too early and dark for legal shooting, 04:15, so I just let him show me the way to the boat. Once again, my mind was abuzz with angst wondering if I did the right thing.

As the "backyard" fishing has been frustrating as of late, I decided to try an historically productive mid-July spot up the bay. When I got to "the spot", my first cast was violently struck with no hookup. Good old superstitious me was a bit nervous that the damn porcupine evoked the "First Cast Curse" and I was doomed, especially since my next 5 casts were totally ignore. The water was absolute glass, so calm that if a fish came within 3 feet of my popper, there would be some changes in the popper's wake, and nothing was showing. Finally the 6th cast showed signs of interest and I was able to go Full Joe Cocker on the next cast to entice an interesting 25" fish to hit the plug. I kept at it and landed a 22", followed by a 29" and a 28" as a coda on a very nice morning's fishing.

As expected at this spot, all action ended at 06:00, the historic "last call" at this location, so I was able to get home early and go back to sleep. Later today, I consulted with my Superstition List Colleagues and "Don't Shoot The Porcupine" was added to the official Superstition List!!

[Roccus7]

Thank Poseidon, the Dr. saved the lure!!

 

 

Been having some good fishing the last few days including a “too big” 34” fish yesterday. This morning’s session got cut short by a trip to ER when the recoil from a fish I was lifting out of the water as the hook came out and buried itself into my hand.

Hand is fine, lure was saved by the skilled physician!!