Chesapeake Bay – Speckled Trout Report – Oct. 1&2

“We can do better.” More a personal philosophy than it is a motto to me, I’m always looking for a way to improve upon fishing successes, even when generally satisfied with the luck we’ve been having. Last year for my first trip out east to fish the Chesapeake, I detailed some of our trials and tribulations in targeting a variety of fish species with live bait, peeler blue crab to be exact. With a year of that type of “new” fishing under my belt, I came into the game much more prepared this time. Not just to do better at what I had already learned, but more importantly, to impart some new wrinkles to the approach. I’m a tinkerer when it comes to all things fishing and hunting, and this would be no different. Before heading out, I cruised the message boards out Virginia-way to find that folks had seen some positive results in using jig/plastic combinations for our intended species, the speckled trout. There seemed to be a strong preference towards shad-style baits, particularly the Storm WildEye pre-rigged baits, for fishing both sea trout and stripers. Others still had used grub-style plastics with lighter jig heads in the tidal creeks we typically fished. Either way, it was apparent that the approach at least had some validity, and I could cast with confidence in the fact that there’s not a predatory freshwater fish that swims which won’t eat jigs and plastics. Why not saltwater fish?

The plot thickens as you start to think about the influences of the tide, and how it drives the entire fishery. Fishery, heck, your night and day…….your trip! Breakfast, lunch, and dinner? They take backseat to the way high tide progressively moves one-hour later each and every day. Sonar? Only moderately useful for this kind of fishing. Reading water seams, ebb-tide flow out of “guts” and “necks,” and the way tidal flow moves your bait are the premium. A wrist-watch? The only true way a fisherman tells time out on the coast is a tide-clock. After all, your fish aren’t going to move up and eat until the flow-tide or ebb-tide washes food around for them. And when the tide turns, you’d better have everything ready at the tips of your fingers, because it’s some of the fastest fishing you’ll ever be lucky enough to experience. Tide is the number one variable that drove our fishing, and it’s also to me, a Midwestern boy with little salt-water experience, the most mysterious one. Tides are caused by gravitational pull at the earth by both the moon and the sun, with the moon being the primary force. For the dates of our trip, being between a new moon and the first quarter, the moon was nearly directly in-line between the sun and the earth. It’s at this time that the tidal forces are greatest, and the tide’s range is at its maximum. This “spring-tide” has nothing to do with the season, and everything to do with the springing motion, higher tides, and faster flushes we were seeing, as evidenced by the boat parking lots being about ankle deep with water when trying to launch. Flow tide lasts for a few hours, and is most intense just before the slack water high tide period. The ebb tide, about a half hour after the slack water period, is the next period we focused on for up to an hour after high tide.

Searching then becomes difficult when your primary tactics are most efficient only when tide-water is running – either filling, or emptying the small fingers and tidal creeks we were fishing. Is there something wrong with our presentation, our location, our boat positioning? To make matters more difficult, sea trout are notorious for being spooky to boat noise and crowding. The good news is that we entered into the game with some knowledge on locations from last year. Small “guts” inside of these tidal creeks were simply tiny freshwater feeders that had their own “deltas” where the mouth of each gut met the main creek channel. Here, there was typically a large shallow shelf, which fanned out at the mouth, and saw a fairly abrupt break into the larger channel. Most of our trout came from this ledge, where they sat on top to ambush prey swept into it from the channel during flood tide, and at the bottom of the ledge to catch bait being swept out of the gut during ebb tide. Typically, we fished the flow-tide period for about an hour before slack water, catching most of our fish just before the water went slack. Then, the wind calms and the water stays high, signifying the slack water period which saw only a small bit of action. One half hour later, the water starts running back out, and the fishing gets pretty intense when you can see current and seams setting up, along with jellyfish, bait, snags, and pine needles that are pushed back out to sea.

As for presentation, this year, I boarded the plane armed and dangerous. My ammo? A pile of stickbaits, and an even bigger selection of H2O Precision Jigs and B’Fishin’ Plastics. Super-Dos and K-Grubs in various colors all caught fish, but far and away the biggest winner was a 3/32 oz. Precision Jig Unpainted with a Ringworm in Firecracker Chart. Tail. This sounds like Pool 4 talk I know, and the coolest part of this pattern was the fact that many of the same reasons it worked on the river, and the techniques used in pitching, lended themselves here. Aiding my introduction to this technique in the bay, was the fact that speckled trout hit a jig and plastic WAY harder than your average walleye. Don’t get me wrong, a walleye on a mission in shallow water sure puts a thump on those jigs, but these fish hit them on the run! One look down their gullet at those sharp vampire fangs, tells you all you need to know about how voracious they both act and look. As with walleye fishing, matching the jig-size (fall rate) to the conditions was critical. However, the tides moved so fast at times that a 3/8oz jig was required to keep you in the zone, let alone to combat the bad winds we fished in day-in, day-out. 18-20mph winds kept us up in the creeks, but even there, fishing a small jig was not an easy task. As for the eats, amidst buckets of clams, oysters, crab, shrimp, and scallops, the trout were in an eating class all their own. Picture the flake and shape of a walleye fillet, with the fat content of salmon in a white meat that had a buttery flavor. The best part about it, was that this type of fishing is truly attainable on your own via a boat rental or some other way to get you into one of the hundreds of tidal creeks up and down the Chesapeake. We also saw several sea kayaks rigged for fishing, even a jet-ski rigged to fish. I had a blast, and learned far too much to ever share within the confines of a report, but I know a few things. Saltwater fishing is addictive. Seafood out there is about as good as it gets. I’ll be bringing more ringworms next year!

Joel