Capt. Pete Ide, Charter Fishing, Solomons, MD

The past couple of months have been pretty good fishing with lots of small blues, rockfish and some Spanish mackerel. With the cooler weather, the big migratory rockfish should be making their fall return in the next couple of weeks.

I have been working with the navy clearing the target range. I came across some amazing photos taken by some crazy sailboaters. Check these out!

Target Ship Photos

Also, one of my friends down at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory sent me this link with some great news about the rockfish spawn last spring:

Big Rockfish Spawn of Spring 2011

Things have gotten extremely busy here! Rockfish have been plentiful in the daytime. Live-bait fishing with spot is producing some fish in the mid-30-inch range. It’s shaping up to be one of the best years we’ve had on spot in several years. We probably had 500 or so spot and perch combined on Saturday. Business has picked up some, but it’s still slow. I’ve been doing a lot of commercial hook and line fishing to fill in the gaps which has been pretty good as well. It’s a ton of work! In 95-degree heat one day last week, I caught 81 fish by myself. THAT was a lot of work. Croaker fishing remains fair. 12-25 fish per person seems to be the standard. I saw a lot of fish the other night, though, and we caught a fair amount despite a roaring flood tide which was encouraging. I was thinking that had we had a fair tide, fishing might have been pretty darn good.

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Check out this nice summer rock! We’ve found some big ones and some spot are showing up. We had 9 big rock trolling last night. I plan on doing some live-line fishing this week. For those who have had spot, live-lining has been good. I will let you know.

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I will be doing a lot of commercial hook and line fishing this year. I’m always looking for help. I can take two people with me, so if you’re interested in cranking your arms off, let me know!

Croaker fishing was generally this week, though it was lousy last night. Some storms in the area brought the wind up and that was it.

Remember that the Comfort Inn has a great rate for our customers. I’m pretty sure it’s $64 per night, but call the hotel to check. The new marina is really nice, too. there are picnic tables and shade trees for before and after your trip. Order ahead and I can get steamed or live crabs for you. The Captain’s Table restaurant at the marina is great, too. They’ll cook your catch for you!

Here is a great pic from a few weeks ago sent in by a client.

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Fishing for rockfish remains steady. We actually went chumming (see pics below) for the first time in years over the weekend. It wasn’t too bad. We caught ten nice rock we could keep. The fish wouldn’t stay with us for some reason though, and the bite petered out. We were able to catch the remainder of our fish with rubber. It was kind of crazy. Standing at the chum bucket while fishing with people who have fished with me for 15 or more brought back a flood of great memories. I sure have had a lot of great times out there on the bay, and man, we used to catch A LOT of fish chumming.

We also caught some croaker over the weekend. One night we had a fair number of fish, but they were of marginal size. Another night we had some beautiful, big croaker (see pics). We didn’t load the boat or anything, but they were pretty fish!

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Good fishing over the weekend. Saturday’s trip was a little short of the limit with a big crew, but the fish were jumping on the boat Sunday! At one point, we had 8 on at the same time. Chaos!

There were more reports of good croaker catches over the weekend. We are supposed to try it this coming weekend so I’m hoping for good weather. Usually the hot weather means good croaker fishing.

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Fishing has been good all week, mainly for 2-4 pound fish, with a few 10-15 pounders mixed in. I also heard of the first good croaker catch of the year. A captain I know caught about 100 last night.

Last week, we put an old superstition to the ultimate test. Many of you know I don’t buy into the bananas-on-the-boat-are-bad-luck school of thought. In the past I’ve had a smattering of bananas on the boat. In fact, I often bring them myself. Though I haven’t compiled any scientific data, I’ve never noticed any correlation between the presence of bananas and the lack of fish or some kind of injury to the crew or mechanical failure. That said, a crew recently showed up with more bananas (seen below) than I’ve ever seen in one place (seriously) outside a market. Well, also seen below are the results of that expedition. Now the cynic would argue that we would have caught far more and far larger fish had we been sans bananas, but for myself, I was pretty happy and took away from the experience that in no way are bananas on the boat bad luck!

Also, check us out fishing in the monsoons of last week.

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That day offered proof of an old adage; the fish don’t care if it’s raining, they’re already wet!

Fishing has been great this week. We knocked out two limits today in no time, and not far at all from Solomons. I’m really impressed at the way it’s holding up this year. I’m thinking the cool weather has something to do with it.

The jet crew came back from Frederick this year. It’s lots of fun just to go to the airport to pick them up and watch them land and take off.

The 18-inch, two-fish season comes in Monday. I’m wondering if we will be able to catch our slot fish.

Make sure to check us out on Facebook. I’m going to work a lot harder at keeping up with that page.

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Trophy season is rolling right along. Fishing has generally been great with a few exceptions. Check out the whopper that was in the 40-pound range! Sorry I don’t have more to say right now, but I have been working like a dog and I’m BEAT!

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The fish were jumping on the boat this morning. Well, maybe the big waves were just washing them into the boat… Anyway, fishing was good despite some lousy weather. One of the fish was in the 30-pound range. I could see bait and fish all over the fish finder and they were hungry!

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