Perch Saved The Day

[catman]

Mr BSolomon, his father-in-law (Pappy) and me left Whitehall Creek at 7:00 AM in hopes of putting a few rock in the box. Trolled east/west from Tolley to EB and north the LP. Offer them everything but the kitchen sink w/o a knockdown. With nothing in the box but ice at noon, we decided to look for some perch to get the skunk off the boat. Fine tuned the Garmin 182C ff and started searching the drop-offs. Man do I love this unit. Found them just north of the BB at the 28' mark. The wind was perfect out of the south to set up a slow drift. Put the heavy artillery away and got out the light stuff and rigged for bloodworms. By 3:00 PM we put 64 nice, fat perch in the box and called it a day. Sure felt good to have some constant pullage with many doubles. All in all it was a great day on the bay with some new found fishing buds to enjoy future trips.

Catman

[Hat80]

Glad to see you got into a mess of Perch. This time of year if you want to get into the BIG BOYS you know what you have to do my friend. Go south young man! ;)....Tightlines

[catman]

Yea, yea, yea you keep telling me that my friend. Let's figure this out. Round trip would be about 70 miles. That's about 30 gals. of gas @ $2.65 per gal. at the marina = $175.50. Just ain't no rockfish worth that much to me.:( Now if I thought for a minute that I could catch a mess of tiderunner trout.....well you'd just have to meet me at the boat.:D

Catman.:) ;)

[Hat80]

you have to pay! You know what they say, a boat is a hole in the water you throw money into. To this day, that saying holds true and always will. ;).....Tightlines

[catman]

Guess I don't want to play that bad.;)

Catman.:)

[Yrosnake]

I'm new to the board and went from a sailboat to a trawler (10 knot cruise). I'm coming out of the Inner Harbor and have limited time to get to good fishing grounds. It seems that I missed the rockfish spawn (got the boat a week too late) ... should I even bother trying to catch them via trolling or should I start bait fishing for other species? Keep in mind that it takes me almost 2 hours just to get to the bay bridge. An extended weekend can get me further south.

Thanks for any input.

[Hat80]

IMHO, if your going to stay around the BB you need to start bottom fishing. The spring Striper run is over and the Bluefish are just starting to get up that way.

As a rule the fishing for most of the year has never been very good at the BB for trolling. Thats why there arn't many charter fleets in the area. All the charter boats for the most part are in the middle bay and farther south.

With that said, in another month or so there should be pleanty of good bottom fishing and jigging in the area and around the bridge. You'll just need to get out there and find the holes to be productive....Goodluck and Tightlines ;)

[Yrosnake]

I'm assuming that if the Blues get big enough I can start trolling again (South of the BB). I've been seeing a lot of pictures of the Black Sea Bass. I've never caught that particular critter but they do look like feisty scrappers. How far down south do I need to get the trawler to get a chance at them? Do I need to get close to the mouth of the bay or do they travel up the Chesapeake?

Thank You.

[gwaud]

you can get black sea bass in the bay after late september in the little choptank area. other than that they are salty water feeders. if you are ever out in the cbbt area i can give yo a couple of spots to fish for them. the patapsco will be hot for stripers after june gets going, if you still wanna troll use the late fall tactics between Baltimore and Sandy point lights for stripers. If not the its bottom fishing.

[Yrosnake]

I'm not sure when I'll be able to head south to the CBBT maybe later this summer. Until then I'm still learning to handle this single screw trawler. This weekend may get me to Kent Point in Kent Island ... though the GF want's to check out Rock hall. She's hesitant on dropping the hook for overnighters and much prefers going into marinas. I'll get her trained soon enough.

Thanks for everyones input.

[Tater Salad]

OK, so i've been out of the loop too. Where (in relation to how far up in rivers) are the rockfish now? Are they back in the bay? Up in the shallows? In the main channels? Where? I don't get it.