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.

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