Great Weather, Great Fishing
Fishing is about as good as it gets with white perch, rockfish, redfish, puppy drum, catfish, and a historic crappie run in St. Mary's Lake.
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Ken Lamb with perch from Patuxent Creek. These fish loved a white spinner tipped with piece of bloodworm.
The perch are active in the shallows of the creeks and rivers hitting bait and tiny spinners. The puppy drum and slot reds (same fish; they are labeled puppies until they get to be 18 inches and become a redfish or red). The slot is 18 to 27 inches in Maryland Waters with a limit of one per day. The Potomac slot is 18 to 25 inches and daily limit 5.
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Catch by the Windsor family in Breton Bay, Potomac, Sunday evening on high tide. Forty five perch and one slot red. There were 5 undersized puppy drum up to 17 inches released.
Rockfish are playing hide and seek for trollers in mid-river and bay. Trollers are finding big catfish taking their lures. The rockfish seem to have all gone to the shallows or up the bay to the mouth of the Choptank and further north. Rockfish are abundant there.
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Ben Windsor with typical white perch on spinner bait.
Cobia are here south of the Target Ship to Tangier Island and south to Hampton Roads. Sight fishermen have seen them on calm days and caught them trolling surgical eels or casting big bucktails and drifting live spot. Chummers with live eels and spot will find them soon within striking distance of Point No Point.
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Ron Hale with slot red from Hog Point in mouth of Patuxent. Reds and puppy drum are every where!
Spot and perch can be caught in numbers in both the Patuxent at Hawk's Nest and at Ragged Point in Potomac. Those are just the best locations; the fish are everywhere.
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Capt. Bernie Shea getting rockfish up the Patuxent, trolling the channel edges.
Catfish are ubiquitious (plentiful everywhere) in the upper Potomac and Patuxent. They love fresh cut alewife.
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Emily Windsor with redfish from Breton Bay that took her orange Beetle Spin.
Crabbing is very good now and will improve on the waxing moon until full and into the last quarter (June 28).
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Brannen Scrivener with an amazing string of crappie that he and his buddy landed at St Mary's Lake this week. That's the best catch of crappie I have ever observed from the lake. Those fish took small black tube jigs.
There has been an unusual explosion of crappie in St. Mary's Lake. Limits of 15 per person have been common, and the fish are biting so fast that a limit can be taken in less than an hour. A black tube lure with a 1/8 or 1/16 oz. jig head has been the best combination. Find a deep hole and cast the lure, without a weight, let it sink to the bottom and when the line comes tight - you have a crappie.
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Brannen with another catch of crappie from St Mary's lake just to show the crappie population explosion going on there!!
Plenty of bass, bluegill, and pickerel now in all fresh water.