 |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||
|
207-363-9269 |
|||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||
 |
||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
Be sure to bookmark this page so you can check back regularly for the latest conditions and tips. |
||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
10-24-09 - For those of you who haven't heard, all of the local salty rivers have received their annual stocking of browns and some brook trout. The Ogunquit got 1200 brown trout, the Mousam got 1200 brown trout, and the Salmon Falls got 800 brown trout and some big fat brookies (so I'm told). Buggers, scuds, two pound scuds, hares ears, pheasant tails, Brocks leech, and olive sparkle maggots have all caught fish so far. I know these are all "put and take" fisheries but I'm hoping more people practice catch and release so that we still have some fish around this winter. I've never understood the desire to eat a freshly stocked trout that was raised on a diet of liver pellets and the turds of all the other inmates. YUCK!!
10-17-09 - I fished for stripers with my buddy John on Thursday and had a great time although it was very cold. For me it just doesn't seem right to be striper fishing when it's that cold. I normally think of steelhead or trout when the weather gets frigid but all I could think of this day was hot seafood chowder and maybe a nip of some single malt. Fishing wasn't too bad for this time of year. Two stripers were landed that measured about 24" and two little rats were also landed. It's so good to see those little guys, I just wish there were more of them around. The water temp was 50 to 51 degrees. No big cow sightings but I know there are still some around. We had a die hard striper fisherman in today that said he is still getting fish but couldn't get near the shore today as the ocean was huge.
10-10-09 - I had a couple of interesting things happen while striper fishing on Thursday. If you remember the wind was blowing about 25 knots off shore and there was a big tide drop. The river was cranking on the outgoing and all attempts to set anchor failed. Casting a fly was very difficult. On my first drift, while dragging anchor, I heard a big suck. I turned to see those big sucking holes in the ocean that I've only seen when big bass are eating big pogies, although I hadn't seen any pogies. I set up for a drift past them throwing the guitar minnow I had on and had no takes. On my second attempt I threw a grocery pollock at them and hooked up BIG. It was one of those hook ups when you first think, "that's bottom". If I pulled any harder I knew my leader would snap. That's when the head shaking started and then the bass headed up river against the strong current while I drifted wind blown and current driven in the opposite direction. My drag was set heavy and when the line came tight to my reel the skiff stopped dead in the river and started swinging towards shore. That's when I knew I had a fish of a lifetime on. This was no little 40 incher. I was well into my backing by the time I got the outboard running and the skiff back into safe water. I have no idea how long it took to get most of my flyline back onto the reel but I was 100 yards downriver, standing on the bow with both hands death clamped on the cork grip, my rod slightly arched with half of the tip under water while the drag on my reel went RRR....RRR....RRR....RRR....and the skiff followed the unseen fish. It was then that I felt the sickening slack. The fly pulled free. I was too mad to cry but I almost puked. I feel like I'm going to puke just writing this. The interesting thing was that after an hour spent trying to hook up again, I switched to a small fly for schoolies and started catching shad. I'm pretty sure those big bass were feeding on shad. I decided to try my luck outside after that but the wind was too brutal to fish. Instead I backed my skiff along the shore line to see if I could find any bass. I spooked a big school of bass in the high 20" to low 30" size range. I put the motor in neutral when I spotted them and the wind blew my bow around facing offshore. They were filing around my bow then heading around past the stern and going away towards shore. I stood watching as they all went past and then the leader of the pack turned, bringing the rest of the school with it, and started following my skiff as it was blown down wind fast. I grabbed a rod and then shut the motor off. As soon as the motor died they went ballistic and split in every direction. From what I could count there were at least fifty of them. We had a call this morning from a rod-less fly fishing tourist on OOB who said that he was watching blitzing bass and making a promise to himself that he would never travel without a flyrod again. Mark Drummond just stopped by and said he fished alone today and landed 8 stripers
between 27" and 28" and one that was 18". He lost one bass and said "I only saw the tail, and it was big".
10-02-09 - After a fall with very few blitzes the first good sign of blitzing stripers was reported today. Our friend Dave was just in the shop and was very excited. Off a local beach he saw a blitz that he said was at least a mile long but out of reach to shore bound anglers. He said they were up for a very long time. My friend Will called today when he got off the water to tell us that he landed a 45 1/2" cow along with one in the mid 30's" and a few in the mid 20's". Mark Drummond told me all his charters this past week caught stripers. Two fish over 40 were caught and his best day for numbers was 19 landed. Definitely not the numbers of years past but it's still good fishing. Several shore fishermen that have been concentrating on an area just north of the shop have been picking up a few fish on every outing. I've been heading north to chase trout for the past couple of weeks to fish some waters that are now closed for the season and have had a great time doing it. Fishing was pretty good. I love the color changes of the trees and the brookies. It's all so beautiful. This week it was back to stripers. I had a couple hours of free time on Wednesday to get out on my skiff. It turned into an hour of fishing but I landed a 41" and 35". Talk about lucky!! Both bass looked very healthy and fought very hard. Thursday was bit tougher, the wind blew hard from the west and the water temps had cooled 3 or 4 degrees overnight. Three stripers were landed between 18" to 26". With the weather predicted for this weekend and the ENE winds I would expect the water to warm a bit. The shore temps were 52 degrees this morning and 58 degrees on Monday. There is still time to catch some stripers before they are gone. I'll be trying it again soon. For those wanting to fish for trout, check the open water fishing regulations. There are still many places open to fish. Good luck.
09-11-09 - I spent the last two days fishing for stripers and bluefish and had some
success. On Wednesday I fished with my friend Jeff. Jeff and I have been buddies since third grade and have fished together since we were kids. We headed outside in my
skiff and discovered that the ocean was getting a bit nasty. You could just tell that the fishing was going to be good and I caught the first bass on my third cast. I was trying to
stay calm while the big waves were tossing us about when Jeff said, "Do you consider this dangerous, or, let me rephrase that, do you think that you would be out here if you
were alone"? I don't know why I feel more comfortable in a dangerous situation if someone is with me but now that Jeff has three children I think that maybe he has
outgrown that feeling. We decided to head in and fish inside where it was safe. Five stripers between 22" and 27" were landed that day and many more were missed or lost
with one big cow refusing the fly at the boat. On Thursday I did the annual trip with my buddy John for his birthday. When we rounded the corner to head out into the ocean we
were met with a blast of easterly wind and the site of big tidal waves blocking our exit from the river. Three large lobster boats headed out past us and each took waves over
their bows. It was exhilarating to witness the force of the sea against the boat hulls and the wind driven spray off the wheel houses lit up by early morning sweet light. We fished
the river and after John landed his first striper we both got bit off by bluefish. We added wire to some beat up old flies and immediately doubled up with nice blues that fought
very hard in the heavy current of the outgoing tide. I lost count of the number of blues we landed and how many times we doubled up. It was a blast to finally get into some blues
on the fly. The water temps during the last two days fluctuated between 62 and 65 degrees. With the constant big seas and easterly blows I expect to see more bait
inshore and with it some good blitzes. My fingers are crossed. Good luck.
09-02-09 - Striper fishing is still good for those who want to put their time in. I fished last friday and landed 8 stripers that were all in the upper slot size. The most amazing sight of the day was a school of about 50 stripers that I saw. The smallest fish in the school was about 30". There were about 8 that I figured were over 40" and there were two that were no doubt over 50". While it was a wonderful experience to see all of those big bass they would not eat a fly. It was maddening!!! They just teemed around all of my offerings and occasionally would come up to my fly, take a quick peek at it, then slowly swim away. They drove me nuts! Old Tom said that while I was out fishing a guy stopped by the shop with a 49" cow in the back of his truck. He said he caught 4 bass over 40" on live mackerel that morning. I fished today with my friend Will and had a great day. There weren't many fish caught, just nice ones. We started the day with me catching a slot fish on my first cast. While I'm sure many people might think "this is going to be an awesome day" after that happens, I think it is bad luck. I can't tell you how many times I've caught a fish on the first cast and spent the rest of the day without catching another. It doesn't matter what the species it is either. Drop your first baited line through the ice while fishing for smelt and instantly catch one and then you spend the rest of the day looking at that one smelt in your bucket and you never get another take. Well, that is what happened today. I never caught another fish. Will, who didn't catch a fish on his first cast, landed a 37" and also his biggest striper to date, a 41". Both bass gave a great battle and it was great to watch Will fight them. Congratulations Will. We had several encounters with schools of big bass and saw one that looked to be at least 50".The lesson to be learned from this days fishing is to always throw a short, crappy first cast and strip it back in fast before it gets eaten. Water temps have been between 62 and 65 degrees. Baby herring and alewives are
dropping out of the rivers and we're starting to see some mini blitzes. The water today was loaded with jelly fish. More than I've seen in a long time. There were two types of
them but I don't know enough about them to say what they were. Keep your eyes open for shark like fins popping up, cutting an S shape through the surface, and then
submerging. These will be Mola Mola or Ocean Sunfish. They love to eat jelly fish and I often see them close to shore this time of year.
08-14-09 - I've had many fly fishermen who fish from shore coming into the shop and saying that there are no stripers around. All I can say is that I'm seeing stripers every time I go after them. Some days I'm seeing a lot of them. They are behaving differently than I have ever seen this year. I've had more stripers follow my flies this year than ever before. Most of the time they just won't eat but they keep following cast after cast. I've been keeping at it though and have been rewarded almost every time I go. When I fish from my skiff I can easily see fish but when I fish from shore I hardly ever see them unless they swirl at my feet. I once had a shore fly fisherwoman on my skiff and a school of about 30 bass were teeming around our flies about 60 feet from shore but would not eat. About the time we gave up on them she said to me "If I was fishing from shore I wouldn't even know that these fish were here. I don't know which scenario is more frustrating." I think the stripers are feeding very well and that is why they are so hard to catch this summer. There is still tons of bait around. Many of the bass I saw this week were right tight to the rocks hunting schools of sand eels and herring that are going shallow to try to survive. I had reports for four days straight last week of stripers crashing bait at the mouth of a local estuary. There have been schools of 5" long bluefish in the Piscataqua but encounters with adult blues have been sporadic at best. Water temps were around 65 degrees locally this past week. Jeff Barnum reported excellent fishing on the north shore of Mass where he landed more than 30 bass one morning. A recent report had many bass moving up the New Hampshire coast. I had one day on the water this week with my buddy Kent. Even though we got a late start due to Corona poisoning we landed 6 stripers. I lucked out again and landed a 40 1/2" cow and Kent's largest bass was 28". Later in the day I lost a huge one when the fly pulled out. All fish caught were on guitar minnows. Congratulations go out to Michael Reeve who caught a 42" striper on a fly tied by Bryant Bickford. It was the largest striper that Michael has landed on the fly. We've received a lot of calls today about the bluefin tuna being thick offshore.
08-01-09 - It has been a while since my last report and there has been a lot going on with the local striper fishing. I'll start with the bait fish. The baby Atlantic herring are still in abundance and growing rapidly. Many have been seen that are at least 5 inches long. There has been much talk about the numbers of sand eels increasing. They seem to be everywhere. I talked with one of the old time striper guides about them and he said he is seeing them in places that he has never seen them before. That is saying a lot for someone who has spent at least 50 years guiding the salt. Mackerel sightings are getting more sporadic. They are settling into their deep water holding areas outside of the river mouths and occasionally being seen up inside the rivers. I had my first report of pogies being seen locally today. We are seeing many more small pollock than we did two weeks ago. They were a nuisance to me while fishing on Wednesday and Thursday. It was a challenge to not catch them. I must say that it is very tempting to let them swim around for a bit after they've been hooked on a fly just to see what might eat them. While we keep getting sporadic bluefish reports they are not staying in any spot inshore
for long which is normal for them. They are around though so keep some wire handy when you are chasing stripers just in case they make an appearance. Striper reports
vary depending on who I talk to. Some fishermen are having a very good season while others can't seem to catch any. Many fly anglers are doing best at night or early
mornings. I talked to one fly fisherman who has fished for stripers almost every night since the end of May and he has caught over 500 striped bass so far this season. A
local spey rodder was just in the shop and said that cow stripers were in the surf this morning along a local beach. He said as the waves were cresting you could see the
bass swimming along in them as though watching them in an aquarium. Unfortunately they had lock jaw and he couldn't get a take. I'm finding the fishing to be very typical for
mid summer with the exception that there are very few bass under 20" around. I fished on Wednesday and had very tough fishing. While I found many stripers I could not get
them to eat. It didn't matter what fly I tied on, they just followed it back to my skiff. Sometimes there were packs of them behind the fly. It was maddening. I finally caught a
20" bass on a guitar minnow. Thursday was a much better day although it started out slow. I was out just before first light and couldn't find any fish. No follows, no bait, no
nothin'! By 10am I'd been casting unsuccessfully for 6 hours straight and was starting to day dream about cool mountain streams full of beautiful small brookies when suddenly I
had my first strike. My fly had landed less than 40 feet from shore and it took on the first strip. When I set the hook the bass blew up along with about 20 other big bass it was
schooled with. I won't draw this out but I will say it was a battle that I won't soon forget. That bass measured just over 40". The next bass was 35" and they got progressively
smaller as the day went on. I don't know how many I caught but when I headed in around 3pm I felt that I had a great day of striper fishing. Persistence paid off. We've got a little
more than 60 days of solid striper fishing left for the season so get out there, put some time in, and good luck when you do.
07-15-09 - I had a trout trip planned for the next three days but with all of the big striper reports I had yesterday I'm thinking of sticking around and doing some striper fishing. I had two anglers talking about almost getting spooled and then losing the big one. One report was of a large school of 40"+ stripers smashing herring. Another report came in this morning about a 73 pound striper caught just east of here, he said he saw the picture, not the fish. We are getting some sporadic reports of bluefish too. But the best report came from Old Tom, on the water at slack tide. He said he was into a big school of 28" to 30" stripers that would take nothing until he put the Grocery Pollock fly on. He called me back after he got off the water and said he landed 20 stripers between 28" and 30" and 3 more that were slot sized. Tom said he thought that he could have caught more but his arms were dead tired so he left. I fished the western mountains of Maine last week and had great success. The water
was very high everywhere I went but I still managed to catch some beautiful brookies and some land locks on streamers and San Juan worms tied with red sparkle core
braid. In three days I saw more foxes than I did fisherman. What a great time of year this is. We are blessed to have so many fishing opportunities that are so close. Now I just
have to make up my mind what I want to fish for.
06-27-09 - Good reports are still coming in from striper fisherman that are catching bass from 10" to 48". Bait is in abundance in all of the estuaries as well as way off shore. Most of the bait in our area is baby atlantic herring, silversides, sandeels., mackerel, and pollock. Last weeks rain made many of the estuaries off color and most, but not all, of the good fishing reports I was getting were from fishermen that were fishing the ocean from shore. I fished for a few hours on Wednesday and landed ten bass between 10" and about 30". I took all of them on a guitar minnow fished with a slow retrieve. I talked to a guy who was trolling for bluefin about 20 miles offshore and he said that the sand eels were thick out there and that they couldn't keep the striped bass off of their tuna rigs. He told me that all of the bass were big and very fat and puking up sand eels. The largest striper they pulled in was 48". This is something that happens every year and with any luck big bluefin will move in on that bait and chase some of those cow bass inshore. For those of you who don't know, it is illegal to specifically target striped bass and bluefish in federal waters. Last year the federal wardens spent a lot of time patrolling those waters and caught many fishermen breaking the law and I'm sure they are out there in force this year also. I've been told that the fines are huge. Due to the high waters last week I've had no reports from trout fisherman fishing rivers,
however I did get a pond report that the hex's started coming off two days ago. If you fish this hatch give a Two Feather Fly a try, they work very well for imitating these large mayflies.
06-15-09 - Today many people came into the shop with reports of great striper fishing.
Fish of all sizes were caught along the coast and in the estuaries. Most reports had the bass from slot size up 33". Largest striper reported today was estimated at 45". One
angler landed more than twenty 10" to 12" schoolies and said there were hundreds of them in that size busting in front of him. Everyone is in agreement that the bass are fat,
healthy, and plentiful. I even had a bluefish report. Lots of them and good sized ones the angler told me. Don't forget to put some wire leaders in your packs just in case you run
into them. Small baby Atlantic herring are still plentiful and there are a lot of mackerel and pollock devouring them. Sandeels are starting to show in good numbers and I've
had several reports of silversides. Still no reports of pogies in our local waters but we are hopeful. The saltwater scene is really starting to take off so ditch your chores, grab
your fly rod, and enjoy some payback from the season past. Who knows how long this will last.
06-07-09 - I returned last night from my trip to Key West with my buddy John. We had six days on the water chasing tarpon. This was my first experience chasing tarpon in June. We fished one day with Michael Pollock and the other 5 days with Gil Drake. They are phenomenal guides and I highly recommend both of them to anyone heading down that way to fish. John and I had many shots at tarpon from 40lbs to 80 lbs and a few shots at 100+lbs. We saw one female tarpon that had to be close to 200lbs being chased by a pack of horny males in shallow water. I can't imagine what it would be like to hook one of those giants. Most of the fishing we did was from a staked out boat. For those of you who haven't done this sort of fishing it goes something like this. The guide holds the skiff in a spot that he feels confident about tarpon swimming past. It's hard to believe but they even know what direction that most of the tarpon are going to come from. The few tarpon that come from the wrong direction are called "Wrong Way Charlie's". The anglers take turns standing on the bow platform, line straightened and piled nicely in a boat basket, fly in hand, ready to fire off a cast at a seconds noticed. The notice comes from the guide and usually sounds something like "TARPON!! 3 OCLOCK ABOUT 40 FEET OUT GOING RIGHT TO LEFT CAST CAST CAST. NO, NOT 9 OCLOCK, 3 OCLOCK!!!!!. Never mind, they're past us. No shot.............. That's ok, there'll be more." Meanwhile, you're standing there feeling like a dub wondering why you're having such a hard time telling time. I mean, I've only been able to tell time for about 44 years. But when everything comes together, you land the fly just far enough out in front of the tarpon so that he doesn't spook. Your fly is moving in the same direction that the tarpon is moving and close to the same speed. The tarpon gets behind your fly and follows it for a while, your heart is in your throat, then that big mouth opens up and sucks it in. You see it all. You strip set hard and then all hell breaks loose. Tarpon fishing is without a doubt the most intense, exciting, visual form of fly fishing I've done. John and I had countless shots at passing tarpon and had about 25 eat our flies and were only able to get three to the boat. While fighting one about 60lbs near the boat, a 9 foot long hammerhead shark came out of nowhere and tried to eat it. Fortunately we were able to snap the fly off and the tarpon escaped. Very exciting! I can't wait until next year. 358 days left to wait.
05-29-09 - My old friend Chuck was in town from California this week to try and catch some stripers and hopefully his first shad. We started with the shad on Wednesday morning and had some good luck using the Shad Roach fly. Orange was the hot color but we also caught some on Yellow Roach's and Chartreuse Roach's. The Shad Roach is a simplistic but effective fly for catching shad and was developed by Eric Roach of Seabrook New Hampshire. Most of the shad caught were the smaller males but we each managed to land a decent sized female, one of which made some screaming runs and one leap. From there we headed to search for stripers. What we found was an incredible amount of baby Atlantic herring being attacked by mackerel and stripers. The bass were sucking down mouthfuls of the bait. When I find the bass feeding like this I can usually put a guitar minnow on and let it sink below the mass of bait then start twitching it to entice a bass to strike. I tried this method but the bait was top to bottom and the only thing I could catch was mackerel and foul hooked baby herring. I decided to put a 4/0 Grocery Pollock Fly on and fish that slowly and it paid off. I caught three upper slot sized stripers in about 10 casts and then the bait and mackerel and stripers moved off out of casting range and it was over for the day. On Thursday we tried for shad late in the day but they weren't very active. Chuck landed two males, lost a nice fat female, and got a striper about twelve inches long. I got skunked. I just talked to Captain Mark Drummond and he reported landing 9 stripers between 18" to 27" today. Many other anglers are reporting similar catches.
05-25-09 - Fisherman have been calling the shop all morning with striper reports from
our local waters. Large amounts of baby Atlantic herring have shown up in every estuary and the stripers are right behind them. A buddy called me about 3 hours ago and said
that they were into busting fish and that the bass were being a bit finicky. He reported millions of baby herring with slot size bass feeding on them. He started hooking up
when he tied on a small guitar minnow and fished it with very slow retrieves. All the bass he caught were between 22" and 26". Another angler reported landing two bass, one at
20" and one at 30". It looks like a great start to the season.
05-21-09 - I went to Joppa Flats again yesterday with my friend Dave and we had an
even better day than on Monday. We got there at about 5:45am and fished until 1:00pm (Dave had to leave for a golf game). We started catching fish right off on the incoming
tide and then did a little exploring during the high slack. Found a few nice fish in the high 20's up river from Route 1. After the tide started going out, we went back down to the
flats and found fish busting & swirling everywhere. Some got hard to catch in the shallow water of the flats (2 to 4 ft deep) and were very spooky. That's when we moved
back out into deeper water and the whole bay erupted. Acres of busting fish of all sizes. The fish averaged between 24 & 30 inches with none under 20 and a few over 30". My
hot fly both days I was there was the "Guitar Minnow" fished on an intermediate line.
05-17-09 - We've had many reports about stripers and blues all around the cape. I got a
report from Cape Cod Bay that a fisherman caught at least 80 stripers, 12 of which were keeper size, 13 keeper flounder, and 40 mackerel. Water temps there have been
fluctuating between 49 and 51 degrees for several days. The shad run has been going on for about a week down there and catches have been good. Locals say the run
started a week late. Closer to Maine, the Merrimac has been producing stripers for about a week. Largest stripers that I've heard about being landed there have been in
high 20" to low 30" size range. Schoolies are being caught in the upper reaches of the Piscataqua River close to the dams. I had a customer in today that caught a 26" striper
in the Mousam River. That is the first solid report from there. No solid shad reports yet for our local waters. I expect them to be here any day. Offshore ocean temps are still a
bit cool. Warmer weather is predicted for the end of this week into next weekend and that should help the water warm up a bit.
05-03-09 - It's hard to believe it is already May. This is one of my favorite months because all of ourMaine fisheries, from fresh to saltwater, start to come alive. So far there are no signs of migrating striped bass along the Maine coast yet. We've had several reports of holdovers being caught but no fresh fish yet. We've had a few reports of stripers on the south side of the Cape and in Rhode Island. I just talked to Capt. Dave Beattie and he reported that his buddy is finding good numbers of bass in the Hudson. The water temp at the mouth of the Piscataqua was 46 degrees yesterday. Alewives and herring are running in several coastal rivers so the shad should not be too far behind. I talked to some friends who have been trying for shad south of here for the past couple of weeks and they didn't have much to report. There have been a few shad caught in the MerrimacRiver but most of the shad fishermen agree that the major run there is late. The Connecticut River is rumored to have more shad but I don't have any first hand reports from there yet. All of the shad and striper fishermen that I've talked to believe that everything is running a bit late this year. I've had many reports of good trout fishing from all over southern New Hampshire and
Maine, and mid western Maine. There are still good hatches of mayflies, mostly Red quills and Hendricksons with some sporadic caddis coming off. Most anglers are
getting more strikes fishing subsurface flies. Good luck.
04-26-09 - The fishing certainly seems to have picked up with the warming weather,
and anglers have been reporting good catches of trout all around. The state has started stocking although it seems like they haven't hit all the regular spots as of yet. People
have been having luck with standard dries like elk hair caddis in black and parachute light Hendricksons, or going deeper with beaded pheasant tail nymphs and small
streamers and buggers. Black stones and Hendricksons have been the heaviest bugs hatching, however there have been some assorted caddis flies fluttering around as well.
I've also noticed some smallish beetles around the streams, but haven't tried a terrestrial as of yet. Fish have been rising sporadically considering the amount of bugs
that have been coming off. Yesterday, I fished a parachute Hendrickson with a pheasant tail dropper and had more luck on the nymph, despite a fairly thick hatch. I
think that this was due to cooler water temperatures that should be warming up with this latest heat wave. I've been having luck tossing small slump-buster type streamer
patterns in all the likely looking spots while keeping an eye out for rising trout.
04-18-09 - We are getting many reports of good hatches on local waters. Midges and small black stoneflies have been plentiful. This past week two anglers reported seeing some red quills and Hendricksons and most anglers are seeing some caddis. The catching has been a bit slow due to cold water temps but it seems to be improving daily. Within a week or two the state fish farmers should be dumping their harvest into most of the local fishing holes and fishing will be easy while these hatchery fish acclimate to a no pellet diet. Old Tom and I dug out our float tubes and had some fun pond fishing last Wednesday. We caught 1 small rainbow each on golden demons, had a few hits, and just about froze our toes off. I saw many size 16 midges hatching but the trout weren't taking them. I still haven't had any reports of stripers south of here but today a gentleman was in saying the mackerel were thick in Boston Harbor. His friend, who reported this to him, said that there were a lot of whales in close to shore and they think they are the reason that the mackerel were in tight so early. I'm not sure if any of this is true but it sure is interesting if it is. I had a report last week that the alewives were staging outside the Damariscotta River. Dip netters are still catching ocean smelt locally. We should start seeing shad in about 3 or 4 weeks. Striper fisherman should keep their eyes on the water temps. The Portland data buoy
reports surface temps fluctuating between 40 and 43 degrees with a high of 44 degrees this past week. 50 degrees is the magic number but I usually expect to start
hearing about fisherman catching stripers when it hits 48 degrees inshore. I would guess that we won't be seeing any fresh stripers for at least a month but will be hearing about holdovers in a couple of weeks.
04-10-09 - I fished with Old Tom around the Sebago area on Wednesday. Most rivers were blown out but we managed to find a couple of places that were at fishable levels. It was great to be back on the water again, the fishing was great but the catching was bad. We both got skunked. Thursday I decided to fish some tiny streams that I've had some luck at over the years. I managed to land a couple of small brookies, one on a tent style hornberg and the other on a small elk hair caddis. I saw several caddis hatching and many midges. Today reports started coming in that the small black stones were hatching in good numbers. Water temps were 40 degrees everywhere that I went. The ice is out of most of the ponds and lakes in our area. Fishing should pick up this week as all reports are for sunny days and warmer weather. Good luck.
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
[Home] [About Us] [Services] [Products] [Seminars] [Guide Services] [Fishing Reports] [Photo Album] |
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
Copyright 2000-2010 by Eldredge Bros. Fly Shop. All trademarks and/or product names contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
|
|||