Local waters

[ronaultmtd]

We sometimes day dream about living in paradise where giant fish are abundant, the weather is perfect and we can go fishing everyday...we sometimes think about retiring and moving to the Florida Keys or the Outer Banks of North Carolina...but...the reality is we live in one of the very best of the best inshore fisheries in America if we just stop and think about our possibilities...the Northern Snakehead fishery of the USA is here...the spawning grounds of our iconic Striped Bass, monster blue catfish approaching world record size...river systems that join to become the Chesapeake Bay...we have it all here in our back yard! Reminds me of the fable of the dog with a bone crossing the bridge looking at its reflection in the water wanting the bigger bone in the reflection! Within 200 road miles is Virginia Beach, Rudee Inlet, Lynnhaven...Ocean City, the Delaware Bay...we are so lucky to live where we live! I get up, get dressed and an hour later I am on the water catching red drum, speckled trout and striped bass...we are living the dream others dream about!

[Memory Maker]

You’re sooooo right

[ski357]

X2!!!!!

[Slobber Bob]

I couldn't agree with you more, Ron. I haven't fished outside of Worcester, Somerset, Accomack, or Northampton counties on the Eastern Shore in years. I have absolutely no reason to either because I can catch such a wide variety of fish every month, with such a wide variety of techniques, that I don't even have enough time to do it all!

[ski357]

Ron,
I shared your post with the two guys who I fished with this weekend (neither is on SL or social media really). They both readily agreed with your sentiment. Our trip this past weekend bore it out. We had a four species trip.

[Mark]

We certainly do live in an excellent area for fishing.

AA County has 533 miles of shoreline, much of it accessible now to kayak anglers thanks to efforts of our local government and water access advocatess like Lisa who posts here frequently.

Our county’s rivers and creeks offer excellent and varied fishing. Just last weekend my son and I caught largemouth bass, pickerels, white perch and a channel catfish on one outing in a single Magothy Creek. Yesterday, the same location yielded another pickerel and a 17-inch striper (caught by my son on the fly) in less than ideal conditions – high water and high winds.

Our SMOG participants are especially fortunate. Their southern Chesapeake fishery includes regular appearances by redfish and speckled trout which only occasionally visit our mid-Chesapeake waters. Yet, a trip to our friends to the south is not far.

And let’s not forget our trout streams in Western Maryland, the smallmouth rivers in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania or the bass, bluegills and pickerels in numerous Eastern Shore ponds.

All of these locations can be reached by day trips or overnight visits at most.

However, I have to say that a late fall or winter trip to the Laguna Madre in Texas or to either coast of Florida is a wonderful change of venue. Just to hear the familiar call of ospreys as they circle above months after they migrate from our waters is a pleasing experience. Fishing in a kayak with a manatee surfacing and snorting nearby is exhilarating. Or seeing cactus growing on Texas shoreline and targeting a redfish swimming in the shallows nearby will raise your heart rate. Of course, reds and specks are always great fun to catch. It’s just a little more fun to do so when the temperatures here in the DELMARVA region are in the 30s and 40s and you're in a warm southern climate.

But most definitely, the Chesapeake Bay is a tremendous resource. We are fortunate to live along its shores. The Bay encompasses 4,480 square miles of water surface. It’s fed by 100,000 streams, creeks and rivers. And its watershed is 64,000 square miles in Maryland and our neighboring states. My source for those statistics is the book, The Chesapeake in Focus, by Tom Pelton. I highly recommend it to all Snaggedline posters who want to learn more about the waters we discuss here so frequently.