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I spent three days this week fishing in southern Maryland waters. Nearly all of the fishing was trolling with paddletails and Gulp baits in water from 2 to 6 foot depths. I caught stripers, bluefish, and specks on each day. Wind was a problem for part of the time, but my third day featured calm seas. I did a lot of paddling in my 11' kayak while trolling. Day 1 covered over 10 miles over 6.5 hours. Day 2 included a long morning session with a shorter afternoon session after a lunch break (total time of 8 hours) -- I covered 15.3 miles that day. On Day 3, I trolled for 9 miles (4.5 hours) and caught 2 stripers, 1 bluefish, and the highlight of the week -- 4 large specks. Ironically, despite covering a lot of water over an entire morning, all four specks were caught in the same small area in water depth of 4 to 5 feet during a 30 min period. Two other kayak anglers were fishing in the same general area -- both caught multiple specks in that same spot shortly after I did.
When I do light tackle trolling in the summer, I try to have different lures on each of the three rods (all had 3/16-oz jigheads). On Day 3, I had a white paddletail on one rod, a gold with glitter paddletail on a second rod, and a 4" Gulp swimming mullet on the third rod. The Gulp was not touched. All the fish bit the two paddletails. The gold one caught my largest speck at 21.5". The fish pulled hard enough to tangle all three of my lines and got wrapped up in line as I landed it.
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Two of the other specks measured 17" and were fat. The final one was 19". I released all the fish.
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Although I caught fish each day, I put in a lot of hours and miles to find them. It took persistence, a good game plan, and (in this case) some advice from local experts to get my fish each day. As an older kayak angler, I am paying for that amount of paddling exertion. Sore shoulders and tiredness accompanied me home yesterday afternoon.
When I do light tackle trolling in the summer, I try to have different lures on each of the three rods (all had 3/16-oz jigheads). On Day 3, I had a white paddletail on one rod, a gold with glitter paddletail on a second rod, and a 4" Gulp swimming mullet on the third rod. The Gulp was not touched. All the fish bit the two paddletails. The gold one caught my largest speck at 21.5". The fish pulled hard enough to tangle all three of my lines and got wrapped up in line as I landed it.
2021-04-11-002.jpg
Two of the other specks measured 17" and were fat. The final one was 19". I released all the fish.
2021-04-11-001.jpg
Although I caught fish each day, I put in a lot of hours and miles to find them. It took persistence, a good game plan, and (in this case) some advice from local experts to get my fish each day. As an older kayak angler, I am paying for that amount of paddling exertion. Sore shoulders and tiredness accompanied me home yesterday afternoon.
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