Tough Opening Day
 

First opening day skunk in 11 years :mad:
Had our usual opening day crew aboard and plenty of food and refreshments but couldn't buy a bite. Started in front of Chesapeake Beach then trolled to mouth of Eastern Bay. Didn't mark much bait and not many fish.
I hope they are still up river spawning.

Trolled pretty much same area, not quite as far north as BP. If it wasn't for logs and sticks we would have never heard the sound of drags screaming.

North of BB was the same although it looks like a lot of the debris has floated south....

With so many skunk reports you really have to believe they are up in the rivers this week...

Sure next week will be better.

We grabbed one Saturday, 38 inches, about 30 lbs. My little 10 yo girl reeled it in, awesome! Truthfully I felt lucky, the two other guys that I talk to on my creek did not catch a fish and one of them catches wayyy more fish than I do.

We were down in the ships off of Annapolis. Lots of bait down there, I was cleaning the rigs about once per hour and half were fouled with trash or jellies.

The fish took one of Fishnuts rigs, thanks Rob!

I will be out tomorrow, happy to work with anyone that's going!

Don't feel bad fellas. I was at Queen Anne Marina all morning Saturday and didn't see much of anything brought in.


Later that day around 2pm I was at Suicide Bridge restaurant (just off the Choptank a few miles north of Cambridge) and saw a guy carrying a real hog back to his truck.....had to be 38 inches. My wife wouldn't have approved of me leaving our lunch date to talk to the guy about his fish. :rolleyes:

Start of the season has been slow for us trophy trolling between TPL and BPL. We have been fortunate to not have been bit by the skunk bug and caught fish the first three days we have fished. However, it certainly has been tough. We only caught 3 on opening day with one being a 39.5" keeper. Monday morning didnt get much better but we hit two over 40" and had two other releases just under 30". Today was a very short trip for a gentleman who has become a regular but wanted to squeeze a short trip with his niece and nephew before they headed back home overseas and we managed one 39"er with a late start and early return so I could get to a meeting at my real job. There is a TON of bait in the area. We snagged five menhaden yesterday and 3 today in our shorter trip (make a huge mess of my leaders). Jellyfish havent been a terrible nuisance but there are fields of debris that can foul the whole spread quickly. Reports from my network of friends have been about the same with a lot of skunks reported. I have heard of a few good bites in the mouth of rivers and getting better further south.

Despite the slow start I think things are about to break loose. First there are reports of ton of fish in the rivers spawning right now and we are coming off the heals of a full moon with little cloud cover so the fish that are in the bay are able to feed around the clock. Water temperatures are rising quickly and soon we will have fish both coming and going filling in the bite. Plus we will have the new moon later this week giving only light during the day. There is always a tough period during the trophy season. Most often it seems to rear its head the second week of the season or so but this year seems to be the first. Best wishes on the trophy season.

All I have to say is I burned 90 gallons to run down to Cove Point and didn't catch Sh#t.

Next time I'm going to follow Jeff's lead and take the boat out for drinks on opening day!