A Whale of a Good Time

Far as I can tell, the biggest news this week has revolved around menhaden. Yes, menhaden, pogies, porgies, what ever you like to call them, there are plenty just off the beaches all along Plum Island, Salisbury, and way up to Hampton Harbor. Why is this important? Well, menhaden are a primary food source for all our favorite fish: stripers, bluefish, tuna. And of course bigger ones, whales, and sharks. Read this book to find out how much they mean to the east coast fishery: The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America

Over the past week the big ones have been feasting on the pogies. We’ve got a nice whale show just offshore, and you can watch them from the beach. Depending on who’s been reporting, there are Minke and small Humpbacks working the bait. Really amazing to watch, mouths wide open scooping up the forage. It’ pretty amazing how high a pogo can jump evading the whales. Ah, the life of a baitfish.

The striper reports are just as big. Plenty of 40″+ fish photos have come our way. Fishers have been getting them on live and cut mackerel, seaworms, clams. Topwater and swimming lures are working great as well. I don’t have a clear picture of which tides are presenting best. The reports are all over the place, and through all of the tide cycles. The general guidance Kay used to give was, “On the outgoing tide, fish the river. Incoming, fish the beach.” and, of course, the more time you put in, the better your chances.

Larger bunker washing up all over the beach on Friday, didn’t have a treble hook or circle hooks to live line one just lures. Took my brother out and he caught his first striper of the season,the bunker were everywhere, Minke whale pushing bait onto beach and was pretty much beaching itself to feed, crazy day. Couldn’t get into a bass but the experience was crazy, bunker pod 2 football fields long. Almost every cast with my charlie graves lure I was snagging bunker.

That was definitely a learning experience, I try to travel light especially when searching up and down the beach for fish, if I had my circle hooks I would have had a good chance on landing a nice fish by live linking one, there’s always tomorrow though

My wife and I took our boys to Sandy Point, on the recommendation from the very nice girl, Kay I elieve, in Surfland, Friday June 25, 2021, and on his first cast, well I casted it for him, but he had to reel it in, our son Theodore, the one holding the fish, sort of, caught his very first striper and could not have been happier…I think he got hooked better than any fish that day!

-Bryan

Hello we are up from PA on vacation and have been doing quite a bit of fishing. Lots of fishing the 16-22 inch range. I have attached a photo of my son Aidan Sibits who caught this 46 inch fish on clams on The town beach. Was wondering if you could post it on the surfland page. The staff at the shop were great with advice and gear to set us up!

We’re out over the weekend and got into several large striped bass and even got a whale show! Haha that work?

Just wanted to share this 40” striper that was caught on a SP Minnow on 6/24 at dead low tide along the beach front. A couple smaller fishes were caught before this one and they were around 20” or so.

On Monday June 21 this large 42 inch 35 pound striper was caught by Joe Cmar on the captain lady at the mouth of the Merrimack.
the fish was netted on board by mates Emily and Dan after a long fight. The fish was released back into the water. Keepers are only from 28 to 35 inches.
The fishing (catching) is great this year.

This was the first time I’ve taken my youngest striper fishing and as luck and high quality clams would have it, she hooked up! Pic makes it lol bigger but this guy was about 22” and gave her a good run before landing on the beach. She said after “wow that was harder than I thought!” Lol. Caught about an hour after low tide on the incoming right out front to the right of the jetty.

Sammy MacCormack is back at Surfland for the summer to work now after finishing her year at school so we will be getting some nice Sunday sunrise pictures!

Caught this on tube and worm on June 18th in front of the mighty Steve Lyons of PI. Caught in Joppa at 5:15pm high tide.