With 14 lines astern of Brook’s Hooks, Capt. Bud Harrison Jr.?s boatout of Tilghman Island, we were bound to catch something. We did. But catching and keeping are two different things as we found out as the day progressed. We caught five and kept one striper.
The current trophy season, which ends today, with a striper slot limit allows keeping one fish between 28 and 35 inches or one 41 inches or over. Most of the fish were from the big-year class that the Department of Natural Resources is trying to protect and which measure 35-41 inches. DNR assistant secretary Mike Slattery ? on board for the fishing and catching ? got his share of ribbing for the rules as fish were released. Much of the jests came from fellow angler Bob Bachman. The former DNR fisheries head now lives in Pennsylvania but still loves bay fishing and bay seafood. He just has to make a trip a couple of times a year to get his fix.
With eight lines on planer boards and the rest behind the boat, standard lures were shallow-fished single and tandem Sassy Shad-type soft plastics, or a few deeper-fished umbrellas sporting bucktails and Sassy Shads. Capt. Harrison noted that most of the fish in the April 21-May 15 season had come to shallower-fished lures. That occurred for us even when fishing the 122-foot deep Devil’s Hole or 117-foot deep water, each of which accounted for one fish.
The sporadic season had started slow and ended moderately. Harrison’s worst day was May 4 when his party caught five fish and kept three. His best fishing was the next day with 31 fish on board, keeping 11 for the 13-man party.
Harrison explained that he will change fishing tactics for the summer season. Plans are to troll early to give parties a chance at a big striper or two then switching to live-lining with spot or perhaps some chumming. The only wrinkle to this plan is that so far, the commercial guys have not been getting any spot.
“If the commercial netters can get them, we can also,” Harrison said of bottom-fishing for bait that he does after a trolling morning. Then, he?ll anchor up to fish over edges, using “just a little chum” to hold the fish while drifting spot on light sinkers to get them down to stripers.
The limits will be two fish of 18-28 inches or one of that size and one over 28 inches per angler. The fish that we released last week were in the 35- to 41-inch range and would have counted for that over-28-inch summer striper.
But count on good bay fishing for the remainder of the spring and through the summer.
“It looks very promising,” Harrison said. “There will be a lot of fish that we can catch.”
And this time, keep.
You can reach C. Boyd Pfeiffer at [email protected].
