Thoughts on Hart Miller Island 11/20

[mdfisherkid]

Hart Miller Island was not a bust but not as productive as other reports I have read; however it was a fun day and great to be out on the water. It was my first adventure on a kayak into the Chesapeake Bay and did not get skunked, so it was not a fail. Started out fishing between the islands zigzagging across the channel with no luck. It was low tide and waters may have been to shallow. Headed out into the bay and fished the bay side of the island, all along the rocky shores and up to the concrete piers sticking out into the bay. Still nothing. On the paddle back in tide had came in and created a nice current between the two islands with some deeper water. Hooked up with a 24" rock trolling over a ledge at about 8' of water, using a 4" swim shad. Hooked up with another but lost it. Buddy I was with also boated a rock just shy of 18", not sure with what lure though.

mdmakaira will probably post a more thorough report with some pictures, etc.

All in all it was a great day for first time in the bay on a yak, and first rock landed on a yak.

[mdmakaira410]

Just a little follow up report from this weekend. Mdfisherkid and i got off to a bit of a late start saturday, due to my inability to set/use an alarm, and got on the water at the rocky point state park ramp at about 10am. We never checked the tide chart and apparently put in right at dead low tide. As fisherkid said, we trolled around the channel between the big and small island looking for holes and dropoffs (as was suggested by MemoryMaker) and found nothing so we huffed it out to the main bay and messed around out there trolling around in about 15-20 feet of water. We marked little the entire time out there on the fish finders so we decided to head back in. By then it was probably around 330 or so and by the time we made it back inside we found we were catching the tail end of an incoming tide. We were met with slight wind against tide conditions but nothing too unruley, had to pull the skupper plug out though. The water level had gone up considerably and chris came up on a hole that dropped off from about 8-11 feet pretty dramatically. I looked over and saw him reeling and he had on a nice fish that we boated and measured out at 24''. That was the first rockfish either of us had taken from a kayak and we were both pretty shocked that we caught it. He took it on a 4'' pearl storm swim shad. With that our spirits were renewed and we started paddling around frantically looking for that spot again to no avail. We spread out at that point and i headed up toward the channel between the smaller island and the point of the mainland (not sure what that town is called). I came in between the channel markers and started marking bait and immediately got a pull down on the glass ghost rapala xrap that DOGFISH suggested. I didnt measure the little guy but i would guess it was just shy of 18''. Fished for a bit after that and eventually headed in just before dark. While not exactly a killer day we both had an absolute blast and learned a ton.

[wiljack78]

Nice report. Sounds like a successful day.