Capt. Pete Ide, Charter Fishing, Solomons, MD

Opening weekend went MUCH better than last year! We caught a bad tide and it was rough for Sunday morning and Monday morning, but other than that things went very well with limits on all other trips. Yesterday’s trip was FANTASTIC with slick-calm sea conditions and beautiful, sunny weather. We caught 10 fish, up to around 40 inches in less than an hour. We never got more than the planer board lines out.

Fishing and the weather were FANTASTIC yesterday. We caught 40 fish in 5 hours for Adam’s research. Most of them had spawned, so indications are that our suspicions that the fish were in the rivers spawning last week likely were correct. Opening Day is just two days away. It’s good there are lots of fish out there.

I have a couple of spots available on a trip for Sunday morning, April 25 for trophy rockfish season. You can reserve a spot by calling or emailing. I would like to get at least two additional people, but would be happy to have one.

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More research fishing yesterday. It seemed the fish may have been moving into the river to spawn with all the hot weather. It was pretty slow but we still caught 10 for Adam’s study. If the weather keeps on like this, we should have a great croaker run this summer!

We did more research sampling today. We caught 24 fish including this 48-inch, 50.6-pound specimen. Fishing was slow in the morning as we had a roaring ebb tide. As the tide slowed, the bite picked up and we ended up with a good catch. It was a little breezy in the morning, but the afternoon was slick calm and quite warm. We never saw another fishing boat. It’s a great time to go fishing, and if you’d like to go before the season opens, we can catch-and-release. I’m offering a special price between now and April 17, so if you have any interest, call for details.

Adam and Ryan with two huge rock. The bigger was 45 pounds!

Box of Rocks

Yesterday (Mar. 24, 2010) we went out on what eventually became a sparkling, warm, sunny early spring day on The Bay. The action came quickly as the rubber bands were popping on the planer board rods. At one point, we had three big rockfish hooked up at the same time. Three scientists from the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Studies (UMCES) located on Solomons Island, Maryland, Adam Peer, the lead researcher on this particular project, and his assistants, Ryan Woodland and Dave Loewensteiner were armed with special DNR permits which allow taking of certain fish for research purposes. They hauled in the fish and placed them in coolers. The day wore on and the bite slowed as the weather improved, but we ended up with 26 big rock on board.

These fish were not destined for the dinner table, however. They were destined for Adam’s lab located at the UMCES on Solomons Island in the new Fisheries Research Complex. I climbed the steps to the second floor and soaked in a panoramic view of the mouth of the Patuxent River and the Chesapeake Bay and Hooper’s Island beyond. I entered the hall, then the lab and was overwhelmed by an intoxicating stench of fish in varied post-mortem states. I found Adam and Dave clad in orange Grunden’s fishermen’s aprons and blue latex gloves smeared with blood and scales. Adam stood at a stainless steel counter with the head of a rockfish and an in-tact, ten-inch menhaden in front of him. Menhaden is a feeder fish found throughout the Atlantic Ocean. The menhaden had come from the stomach of one of the rockfish . Adam had removed the otolith stones from the head of the striper. These ‘stones’ have growth rings similar to those found in trees and are used to determine the age of the fish. As Dave and Adam cut up the fish they recorded data on their newly acquired samples.

A little later in my visit Adam hefts out the biggest sample of the previous day, a 45-inch, 45-pound monster. It’s big enough and awkward enough that he requires a little help from Dave. At a glance, Adam guesses the fish to be around 20 years old. During research last year, Adam studied three stripers that were each just that; 20 years old. Poor fish never even got to enjoy a legal beer! He won’t know for sure how old this particular fish is until the otolith stones are analyzed. A fish like this can produce as many as 4-6 million eggs in a single spawn.

Adam is currently working on a PhD in fisheries biology. His research focuses on the characteristics of spawning striped bass in the Chesapeake. He is trying to determine how characteristics such as the age, size, and energy density of individual fish affect their productivity as well as how these characteristics affect the growth and survival rate of their offspring. One of the methods he uses is to measure the caloric levels in the eggs of spawning females for which he has an instrument. That instrument can also be used to measure energy levels in other parts of the fish to determine where specifically (such as the liver or muscle tissue) the fish store energy.

The reproductive quality of a fish is not necessarily parallel with the size of the fish. In other words, the fecundity of a fish can drop off or increase in certain size or age ranges, much as it does in humans. Because of this, Dave asserts “Slot limits are the most effective fisheries management tool theoretically, but in practice they don’t work.”  A ‘slot’ limit is when fishermen are allowed to keep fish above a certain size and below another size, say if you can keep striped bass between 18” and 36”. I have personally seen the evidence that they don’t work. It’s because it is very difficult for fisherman to determine the size of the fish they are targeting with any precision and the result is a high rate of fish outside the slot getting caught, injured and killed unintentionally.

Adam hopes that in the end his research will help fisheries managers make better stock assessment models which in turn should enable them to make better decisions regarding size limits and the timing of openings and closures of fishing seasons. He said “(My goal) …is to better manage and sustain the fishery. The more we know about what factors influence the reproductive potential of the fish the better we’re able to predict the next year of fish that join the population.”

Trophy rockfish season opens April 17. I am offering a little better rate on some weekdays this year, so get in touch and book a trip!

Not really, but it sure seemed cold enough. I have left the Beach due to the fact that the cold water has pushed virtually all of the rockfish out past the three-mile line where it is illegal to possess striped bass.

I want to sincerely thank all of you again for what was a pretty good year, especially considering the economy. Your business means everything to me and my family, and I honestly don’t know what the heck I would do without it. Overall fishing was very good and so was business.

Virginia Beach, however, was another story. It was hardly worth the trip this year. I had to cancel a bunch of trips due to the horrendously cold and windy weather and poor fishing in legal waters.

Some captains are still fishing. I have read claims on web sites that the fish are ‘well within the three-mile line.’ (Hahaha! I just double-checked afore mentioned web site and they took the lie off the report! The noose is tightening apparently) They go on to claim the ‘warm spell’ will move the fish even closer. What’s it going to do, push the fish up on the beach? I couldn’t believe it when I read these outright lies on the web site of one of the prominent marinas on Rudee Inlet. Do any of you really think I would just cancel a bunch of trips and bring my boat home if fishing were that good in legal water? I hardly think so.

The truth is that the captains who are still catching fish consistently go well offshore, sometimes as far as 30 miles, where the fish are incredibly thick. They catch their fish and run as fast as they can to get back to the three-mile line. During this time, they have their fish in trash cans, ready to dump overboard at the sight of the marine police or Coast Guard. With the increased enforcement, I have heard about several boats doing just this lately. How DESPICABLE! These are 10-20 year-old rockfish that are the breeding stock. They are our future. They dump their fish, then go right back out after the police leave and catch more fish. I can only hope that NOAA and/or the US Coast Guard catch these guys and make them pay. I have watched it and, stupidly, kept my mouth shut for a long time now, but I’m done. If any of you find yourselves on one of these boats, be careful because you could be charged. This is not a minor offense. It is a federal crime, possibly a felony.

If you find yourself fishing with one of these intentional, egregious violators, or just have information that will help put these guys out of business, I strongly encourage you to document the name of the captain, name of the boat, name of the marina and area fished and call the NOAA Office of Law Enforcement at 727-824-5344.

Sorry to end on a sour note, but it’s a horrible situation down there that needs to be addressed.

Check out this pretty redfish caught near Hooper Island Lighthouse. We caught in on cut spot while chunking for blues.

We had ten days of rotten weather lately and we’re trying to get our bearings. Nobody fished much during that period and we basically took a quantum leap from summer fishing to fall fishing. The Spanish mackerel seem to have disappeared, but there are LOTS of small blues around, and the fall run of rockfish is starting to show signs of life. The fat fall blues should be around anytime now as well.

The Spanish Mackerel have showed up in fair numbers. This was the first one of the year, caught a couple of weeks ago. Also, check out this peculiar little guy. It’s a burr fish. We actually caught three this year. In the oddball category as well we have caught four stingrays, quite a few whiting and even a keeper sea trout. It’s sad that trout are now a novelty, but that’s what they’ve been reduced to.

On a recent trip, we caught nine keeper flounder, including a beautiful 21-incher. Above is a picture of long-time customer Phil Wagner with that beauty along with the pride of Baltimore, a Natty Boh. Phil is a very cool cat who was once the manager of the world famous Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington. He has some great stories about some very famous people including J. Edgar Hoover and President Lyndon Johnson.

The past few weeks have been great for big, fat croaker. There have also been lots of small bluefish and a couple bunches of big (30-50 lbs.) redfish around.

A couple weeks ago we had the privilege of having Brian Westbrook of the Eagles on the boat along with some of his friends and family. If you are a football fan, you know Westbrook is a great player who kicks butt on the field. It was lots of fun and Westbrook is a very cool guy.

Hey all,

Fishing is now transitioning to full-on summer. The biggest rockfish have headed north to cooler climes (must be nice!) and the smaller resident fish have moved into many of their summer haunts. We have still managed to catch a few 30-inch plus fish here and there. There is some live bait fishing going on, but trolling has been more reliable, so we’ve generally been sticking with that. I will do some live-bait fishing this weekend and let everyone know how it goes. When the spot come in bigger numbers (mid to late June) we should transition to all live-bait fishing.

We ran our first couple of night trips over the weekend with mixed results. One trip was pretty decent and one was fairly slow. I am hearing reports of big croaker up the rivers and I’m hoping they just haven’t made it out to their usual places yet.

Remember that this year I am offering a ten-hour trip for the hardcore fishermen. This trip doesn’t cost that much more and you can do A LOT of fishing!

I hope to have some good croaker pics up after the weekend.