St Mary's Lake 6/17

[whenican]

After being almost skunked fishing in 2 different saltwater locations & saved by the bell by some feisty white perch & seeing daolai & friend on the water where I hooked a keeper striper but lost it when my line snapped on the ul set-up as the fish nose-dived when I got it to the surface, I launched after the storm passed in late afternoon & fished until dusk for the 1st time here. Needless to say, I had a blast casting topwater baits & casting/ trolling beetle-spins. All in all, I caught pickerel, LMbass, & huge( what they call jumbo perch in Ontario, Canada) but what I call big-ass yellow perch. I caught them trolling! There are a few areas where stumps can be a problem but I had to find a place to launch that was out of the wind. I ran into another yakfisher named John too. It was my 1st trip in s. MD this year. The saltwater fish must've heard that daolai & I were coming down so they hid from us just in time. The smog guys needn't worry as the fish will probably return to their normal haunts. I enjoy fishing different spots & catching a variety of species. Oh, yea- there were plenty of spookmasters w/ pedal to the metal zipping by merely a few feet from me in my kayak. I'm sure dnr would've written some unsafe boating tickets to these spookmasters. I cannot understand why a moron would zoom right thru the area where you are fishing when there's plenty of water to go around....maybe since they are not catching they anything they want to spook everything so I won't catch anything either? I'll be back!

[Big Mike]

Shhhh, don't tell folks that trolling can be very effective in SML. They think there's a deeper secret. I usually only catch one or two yellows in an outing so really happy to here about your success. I've fished there a lot and think I know where all the trees are, but every now and then there's a surprise bump.

We do have some jerks on the water down here. On Friday we were fishing some shallow water in Smith Creek when a guy in a small boat with a dog in it came around the point and bee lined it towards me. About 30' away his dog voluntarily jumped out of the boat and he had to do an abrupt 180 to retrieve the dog. Needless to say I had wake coming from every direction. After picking the dog up he took off at 90 degrees towards the opposite shore. No idea why he felt the need to buzz me and I like to think the dog was trying to change owners.

[ronaultmtd]

That guy was a pure jerk, Mike...couldn't believe the dog jumped out of the boat at full throttle, but...otherwise he would have run over you...

[daolai]

Good seeing you out there whenican - after chatting with you we picked up and went to st. jerome's and my buddy picked up a legal 20" striper and trolled up a nice sized croaker. Lots of bait in the water and sadly we didn't see the half bitten dolphin that was floating around. Just couldn't find the stripers and blues. Just another week or two and I think the blues and croakers will be in thicker.