June 18, 2021 Report
The buzz this week has been that the fish are all over, and pretty consistent. The beachfront, which is sometimes overlooked this part of the season, has been popping with medium fish using swimming or topwater lures. Clams and worms work too. Birds are working the sand bar and picking out small bait right at the water edge in a foot or two of water. You don’t need to cast a mile either. Both tips of the island are working too. Good hauls from the North along the river, and the south end too.
The boat guys have been stealing the show. Many, many big fish have shown up, and are eating just about everything. The Tube & Worm, SP Minnows, white paddle tail jigs and on big streamer flies. In the Merrimack Mouth we’ve seen larger fish caught with live mackerel drifting on the outbound tide. Most of the regular morning crew are going upriver. The bite is good up there, but especially before and during sunrise. Considering the light comes up at 4:15 these days, you gotta get an early start.
There are reports of ponies in the mouth and along the shore. However the fleet of commercial bait boats are lurking around, so you might not find a school before they do.
John and Mike Brown from Topsfield
John & Mike Brown from topsfield and Newburyport were catching bass inside the mouth for a good start at 5am on 6/13. By about 7:45 the bait fish were on the surface off plum island (outside of mouth) and the sp minnow was effective for Mike to catch one 43″ and John 40″.
Steven LeBlanc
I was fishing on sandy poin and sent out a extra large chunk of mackerel about the size of a baseball and caught my first shark ever at low tide in the change
Charlie Link
44” on an eel in the surf from Seabrook Beach.
The Sullivans
Catch and release. George wanted to eat
Nice surface feed out front a couple miles north of sand point. Caught at 2 pm on a bass assassin. Didn’t measure. Just took a photo and sent her home. Caught on one of Craig’s rods. He finally showed me where the on button is