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Rockfish in the Severn are heating up again. For the past couple of weeks, I've been catching fish, just not the bigger keeper fish that make your drag sing like Whitney Houston.
I launched at 5:15 this morning as the tide was just starting to flood. The sun was still hiding but light out enough to paddle without navigation lights. I'm still using my 1oz bucktail/paddletail combos to troll. One deep and one shallow. I also have two other rods ready and rigged with a 1/2oz bottom jig and a top water popper.
I get up to troll speed about 100ft from my launch and casted my shallow lure first. As soon as I casted my second lure my first lures gets a taker. I land the fish and turns out to be 14 inches. For the next 45 minutes I land around 10-15 undersized rockfish ranging from 12"-17" and couldn't troll without a small fish grabbing either lure at any depth. Definitely a fun time right off the bat but I wanted to find a little more size.
I look off into the distance and see some breakers, not that it looked like bigger fish but just gave me another avenue to fish a different method. I paddled as hard as could (without my trolling lures deployed) to get to the same vicinity of the breakers and grabbed the rod with my popper tied to it. I casted it and retrieved using a sharp but slow and steady jerk-jerk-pause motion. Right away, I had a fish jump a foot out of the water trying to get to my lure. I get the lure all the way in with no other bite attempts. I casted a second time and get the lure about ten feet from my board and WHAM! I knew immediately that this was larger than any of the keepers I caught earlier in the week. I literally only had to put three revolutions on my reel to get this guy boardside and then land him. As I was trying to get ahold of the fish the line broke at the lure so I was scrambling to keep him topside. Luckily, I managed to keep him and the lure in my possession. After getting him tied off to my stringer I measured him out to 25-1/4". I was extatic!
The bite died down after this fish so after 6-7 more casts I went back to trolling to find another keeper or breaking fish. For the next 30 minutes I caught 1 dink and decided to call it a morning.
As I was headed back to my launch I noticed some bigger swirls in the shallows about a mile from my launch. So, I retrieve my trolling lines and once again grabbed my popper rod. I casted using the same method as earlier and by the 3rd cast another fish with some fight hits hard. I land it and get him in my fish grips and measured out to 20-1/2". It was an awesome feeling limiting out when I was already content with the one fish that I had.
All in all, topwater made it possible for me to head home limited with a 25-1/4" and a 20-1/2" rockfish while trolling made the rest of the time exciting with dinks.
Here's a link to my Instagram for those of you who would like to check out the short video I made.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWh3PSYAJLv/
Good luck to all!
I launched at 5:15 this morning as the tide was just starting to flood. The sun was still hiding but light out enough to paddle without navigation lights. I'm still using my 1oz bucktail/paddletail combos to troll. One deep and one shallow. I also have two other rods ready and rigged with a 1/2oz bottom jig and a top water popper.
I get up to troll speed about 100ft from my launch and casted my shallow lure first. As soon as I casted my second lure my first lures gets a taker. I land the fish and turns out to be 14 inches. For the next 45 minutes I land around 10-15 undersized rockfish ranging from 12"-17" and couldn't troll without a small fish grabbing either lure at any depth. Definitely a fun time right off the bat but I wanted to find a little more size.
I look off into the distance and see some breakers, not that it looked like bigger fish but just gave me another avenue to fish a different method. I paddled as hard as could (without my trolling lures deployed) to get to the same vicinity of the breakers and grabbed the rod with my popper tied to it. I casted it and retrieved using a sharp but slow and steady jerk-jerk-pause motion. Right away, I had a fish jump a foot out of the water trying to get to my lure. I get the lure all the way in with no other bite attempts. I casted a second time and get the lure about ten feet from my board and WHAM! I knew immediately that this was larger than any of the keepers I caught earlier in the week. I literally only had to put three revolutions on my reel to get this guy boardside and then land him. As I was trying to get ahold of the fish the line broke at the lure so I was scrambling to keep him topside. Luckily, I managed to keep him and the lure in my possession. After getting him tied off to my stringer I measured him out to 25-1/4". I was extatic!
The bite died down after this fish so after 6-7 more casts I went back to trolling to find another keeper or breaking fish. For the next 30 minutes I caught 1 dink and decided to call it a morning.
As I was headed back to my launch I noticed some bigger swirls in the shallows about a mile from my launch. So, I retrieve my trolling lines and once again grabbed my popper rod. I casted using the same method as earlier and by the 3rd cast another fish with some fight hits hard. I land it and get him in my fish grips and measured out to 20-1/2". It was an awesome feeling limiting out when I was already content with the one fish that I had.
All in all, topwater made it possible for me to head home limited with a 25-1/4" and a 20-1/2" rockfish while trolling made the rest of the time exciting with dinks.
Here's a link to my Instagram for those of you who would like to check out the short video I made.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWh3PSYAJLv/
Good luck to all!
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