Chesapeake Bay Striper Fishing - 10/18/15 - Rock Hall, MD

Met up with BGCM Pete, his son Pete Jr. and his friend Chris for a day of striper fishing on the Chesapeake. 

The weather forecasts showed breezy conditions in the morning with the winds calming down a little around mid day. When we put the boat in the water it was definitely breezy and a little rough. We motored out to the Love Point area and set a 8 rod trolling spread using planer boards. With the rough conditions we had a planer board clip break and had to scramble to go retrieve the planer. Ended up just using one planer as the rough conditions made it tough to keep two in the water. 

Trolled for the first hour with no luck, we constantly searched for birds and eventually found what we were looking for. Just north of Love Point we ran into a giant school of stripers feeding on the surface chasing bait fish with hundreds of birds working the schools. We trolled through the school and caught our first striper on a trolling rod. Unfortunately it turned out to be a little "Dink" sized striper only about 10". We checked the planer lines and found a couple other stripers too small to pull the lines out of the clips on these. We then decided to pull in the planers and just troll 5 to 6 boat rods. We kept making passes through these fish and ended up catching and releasing 20+ small stripers out of this school. We would troll through the fish and have Pete Jr and Chris cast small swimbaits and spoons into the schools and had numerous multiple hook ups. It was a lot of fun, but not the size stripers we were looking for. We eventually left this school and headed further south and west towards the Bay Bridge to find another school.

The next group of birds we found produced more of the same. Small stripers were nailing the trolling rods as well as the casting rods right and left. We had multiple triple hook ups, but could not buy a striper over 14 or 15 inches. Chris was able to catch 2 small bluefish that made the cooler in this school of fish, and Pete Jr. hooked into and landed a very nice 18" bluefish at this spot as well which put up a great fight on ultra light tackle.

After catching more than 50 or 60 stripers we decided to start working back to the dock as the wind was getting stronger and stronger. On our way back through Love Point we found another giant school of fish and decided to troll and cast the ultra lights through these schools. Chris hooked up to a nicer fish on a green 4" Storm Swim Bait, and after a nice fight on lite tackle we slid the net under our first keeper striper right at 20". We kept fishing through the school catching small striper after small striper when I hooked into a nicer fish. I passed the rod off to Chris and he fought and landed our biggest striper of the day around 25" and another nice Chesapeake Bay keeper was in the cooler. 

By this time the wind was really blowing at 30+ mph out on the water and we tried to head back up wind to catch the school of fish and diving birds, but we were getting soaked just trying to get there. We decided to put Pete's camera away and head for the dock. We had a bit of a bumpy ride in but made it back in the harbor. 

It was a fun trip with lots of action. Can't wait to see Pete's video of all the fish we caught and the bird play that was all over the place! Will have to try again in a couple weeks when the bigger fish start moving in.