Sum up your impression of this year's fishing.
My impression:
First half of the year SUCKED.
Both freshwater and saltwater fishing were lousy for the first half of the year. Although I fished mostly north of the bridge and well south of the Key bridge. I did get south of the bay bridge a few times but with terrible results. We took a charter out of Deale in June I think and did ok trolling off of Chesapeake Beach and a little south of there. I forgot the captain's name, but the boat was the Snow Goose and the mate went by, "Smitty." Caught our limit of decent fish up to about 30 inches at best I think. I know I posted a report on the trip here somewhere.
NO birds at all this year.
No Rockfish of legal size until about July I think, and even our usually hot Perch spots were pretty weak. We did find a few new Perch holes though and they paid off nicely.
Around July all of a sudden we started catching fish, and it hasn't stopped yet. Although it has slowed down a little. For about 6 or 7 weeks we could go out and catch so many nice fish that my back and arms would hurt the next day. All of this was in water from 3 to 10 feet deep. Even MONSTER catfish were hitting crankbaits, beetlespins and anything else we were throwing.
Croaker showed up for about 20 minutes this year.
Seriously I think they were around the usual places (Like Podickery) for a few days at best and then we never saw them again.
Blues were thin this year too. We caught a few, although we weren't really fishing for them. There's usually a lot more caught as a byproduct of Striper fishing.
Did ANYBODY here catch any Spanish Mac??? Usually someone I know does and I get a few bags to cook up. Not this year.
Freshwater was ok, but my usual favorite ponds and the Pocomoke River didn't deliver as many fish as usual, nor was there much size to what I did catch. The good news is that I finally caught a Largemouth in MD that was over 5 pounds. My MD record previously had been 4 pounds 11 ounces I think. (I've caught bigger in Florida and Mexico though, with Bass topping 8 pounds.)
I started trolling this year!
Prior to this year the only trolling I ever did was aboard charters.....and maybe once or twice on private boats over the past 20 years. It's definitely fun watching the rod get hit, but it goes against my freshwater nature to "sit back and wait" when I'm used to casting for hours at a time. Still love it though.
No Yellow Perch at all thbis year that I can recall, and I know we tried a few times.