Capt. Pete Ide, Charter Fishing, Solomons, MD

Sorry to have gone so long without a report! The night fishing has improved greatly, even if the weather hasn’t. The south wind cancelled us out twice this weekend, but we did fish Friday night and it was great. We had close to a limit of croaker, plus a few blues.

I haven’t been out many days, but the ones I have have not been nearly as good as they were before the commercial hook and liners raped the gas dock. We are still able to catch our limit of rockfish on most trips, however.

It sounds like help is on the way, though. I’m hearing reports of nice Spanish mackerel and huge redfish in the Smith Point, VA area and have personally seen quite a few breaking bluefish near the target ship, so I think things might be getting ready to get good again soon.

Mother nature finally gave us a break last night and we were able to make the most of it. The weather was spectacular. Flat calm water and nice warm temperatures meant smooth sailing and fishing as good as it gets. These happy anglers caught a limit of nice rockfish live-lining, then went and caught a load of nice croaker and a few snapper blues. The 10-day forecast looks great, so hopefully this good fishing will hold up. We could really use it after the worst stretch of summer weather I’ve seen since 2003, the year of Hurricane Isabel.

I have availability for individuals or small groups this Saturday morning. The folks I have booked have had some people back out and need some extras. The game plan is to go live-lining for rockfish and do some bottom fishing for spot and perch. The live-lining has been red hot, so give me a call.

Live-lining for rockfish remains fantastic in the face of a commercial onslaught. Commercial fisherman descended upon the gas dock in a display of greed and gluttony which is shockingly condoned and facilitated by the State of Maryland. It’s the height of the tourist season and these commercial fishermen, many of whom are very secure financially, are taking thousands of pounds of big, beautiful rockfish four days a week from the one place we have to catch rockfish in our area. Worse yet, many of these fish are going out of state to places like New York, so Maryland is seeing minimal benefit from this fishery. On top of all of this there has been virtually no enforcement of the laws that regulate this fishery. Commercial boats are staying out later than they are supposed to and catching way over their daily limit. Why won’t the State do anything about it? I can’t stand it. I’m starting a grass roots effort to get rid of this fishery, at least  during the tourist season. The State is doing its best to ruin a great thing. Call your State Representative, State Senator or the Governor himself and tell him or her you want this stopped immediately! It’s our State, they’re our fish. We can do something about it, but you have to DO SOMETHING! So call!

OK, maybe I shouldn’t drink so much coffee.

Anyway, croaker fishing was terrible last week, mostly due to screwed up weather. Storms and wind have been the main culprit. Sunday evening, however, was the best croaker bite I’ve seen all year. We made one drift and caught 80 big ones before once again being chased to the dock by a thunderstorm. I hope they are finally getting ready to do their thing. Though I wasn’t there, Saturday and Monday nights were supposedly good too.

We are also catching some of the biggest perch you will ever see. Spot fishing has been spotty (sorry!). The big ones just haven’t shown up consistently yet. The should be here soon.