Chasing Birds Aboard Thunder Road

I got an opportunity to join my fishing buddies Mike and Ryan on a private fishing trip with Shawn Kimbro aboard his center console, Thunder Road.  Mike had won the trip at a CCA event last year, and he finally was able to organize the trip with Shawn for some fall striper fishing.  The prize allowed for two fishing buddies to tag along, and Ryan and I were lucky to be asked to join Mike on this excursion.  Thanks Mike!

We weren't scheduled to meet with Shawn until 3PM, so I took advantage of my time in the area by shopping a little at Bass Pro in the morning, and also doing some shopping at Shore Tackle & Custom Rods.  I won a gift certificate to the shop during the CBKA tournament raffle, and the shop is located by the Kent Narrows, so I figured that I would stop in, say thanks for sponsoring the tournament, and get some gear.  I came out of the little shop with a new custom-built jigging rod that I hoped to use to catch some big stripers later in the day.

Working birds.  Photo credit: Shawn Kimbro.

We met up with Shawn Kimbro and launched out of Shipping Creek in no time.  Shawn was really knowledgeable of the area, which was evident by all the comments he made about various underwater structures we were passing as we rode out to the mouth of Eastern Bay.  Some of the areas might be accessible via a kayak, but they would require a good paddle to reach.  It was not long before we got to the mouth of Eastern Bay, and we immediately found a flock of birds picking up baitfish that the stripers were scaring up.  It was quite a sight!  I had known to look for working birds when fishing, and have often found small groups where a few birds might dive in for fish here and there.  But never have I seen a flock so thick that it looked like a black cloud from a distance.  We immediately started jigging and within a few minutes all of us had pulled up at least 1 or 2 small stripers.  I think for every 1 fish that Mike, Ryan and I caught, Shawn probably caught 2 fish.  His experience was already noticeable.  Here's some video footage of the chaos amid the birds:

Shawn has written in his book, and also told us that the bigger fish would be on the outskirts of the main school of breaking fish, and deeper below them.  However, I kept forgetting this throughout the day as I gave in to the temptation to just jig right in the middle of the school of fish.  It was just my instinct.  But I can tell you that I caught far fewer big fish than he did all day.

One of the fish that we caught in the first school of fish barfed up some of its food, and we could see that these fish were feeding on small bait.  We wanted to catch big fish, and the big fish should be feeding on big bunker.  Now that we had all shook off our skunks, Shawn made the call to go searching for some other schools of fish.  And that was the game that we were to play for the rest of the afternoon - find flocks of birds and catch the fish underneath.

Mike catching fish at sunset.

Chasing birds on a boat was such a different experience from what I'm used to in a kayak.  Shawn would pull out his binoculars to try to find signs of birds in the distance, and once he found a group, we'd go over to them and fish.  I asked him how he was able to find the birds from far away - even with binoculars.  He explained that you get a feel for what the water should look like as you scan around.  Once you find an area of the water where the pattern looks different, you can focus on that area and see glints from the birds' wings.

My new fast-action jigging rod worked great!  Photo credit: Shawn Kimbro.

It was interesting to see so many different flocks of birds on the water.  If we weren't happy with the size of fish under one flock, we'd leave them and search the horizon to find a different group of birds.  We didn't need to hunt for the fish, or look for structure on the maps.  We just needed to find the birds.  I remember that one flock of birds was located right at the point of a drop-off, which was exactly where one would expect to find fish.

As the sun was setting, we found one last flock of birds and jigged for some more fish.  I took this opportunity to do a little topwater fishing, and we all had a good laugh at all the stripers that were coming up and hitting it.  Jigging and topwater fishing are probably the most fun techniques for catching fish.  As the sun fell beneath the horizon, we called it quits and sped back to the ramp for Ryan to get home in time to tuck in his new baby boy to bed.  We didn't catch any of the huge fish we were looking for, but we caught lots of fish (and a few birds).  It was a great experience watching the Chesapeake Light Tackle master at work, and it was a great pleasure talking with him.

Photo credit: Shawn Kimbro.

I love fishing from my kayak, but boat fishing was pretty fun too.  I can picture myself as captain of a center console some day...heh heh.

Susquehanna Flats

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After I had my successful trip to the Susquehanna Flats last year, I told my friend Trey that he had to come and join me this year to catch some Chesapeake Bay Rockfish.  He's more of a freshwater angler, typically hooking up with Largemouth Bass in the local lakes by his home in western Virginia.  He has never fished for Striped Bass before, and I wanted to share the fun and excitement of reeling one in with him.

The calm Susky Flats

So for a whole year, we waited in eager anticipation for catch and release season to open on the Flats.  We  had a couple schedule conflicts in the beginning of the season, but finally settled on a date when both of us were free to make a trip to Havre de Grace to fish.  The year-long wait was finally over. Unfortunately, the weeks leading up to the trip only yielded poor reports of Rockfish in the Susquehanna Flats, and I was losing confidence that we would actually hook up with any Rockfish.  I let my friend know about the reports, and suggested some other alternatives like fishing for Catfish, or maybe even joining the Mid-Atlantic Kayak Bass Fishing tournament.  He was okay with the odds of not catching anything, so we stuck with our plan and made preparations to launch from Millard Tydings Memorial Park at sunrise on Saturday April 27th.


We got to the ramp at exactly 6:00AM, and met fellow MKF forum members DaveFX35 and Yak Fish.  They have had a couple trips under their belt already this year, so we chatted a little to talk about our plans for the day and to discuss what techniques we would try.  It seemed the name of the game for kayak fishing the Susquehanna Flats was trolling jerkbaits.  The Flats is a huge body of water, and the fish are typically schooled up in small areas, so trolling is just the easiest way to cover all that water to find them.

Trey's all set and ready to go.

Trey and I were lucky to get a parking spot immediately next to the ramp, so we just carried our kayaks and gear down to the floating dock and rigged up there.  Within the next hour we were on the water and ready to paddle into the big expanse of water known as the Susquehanna Flats.  We stuck with Yak Fish at first, and he suggested that we spread out to cover more water, and we could call each other up if we hooked up with any fish.  That sounded good, so Yak Fish went further north, and Trey and I headed straight east from the marina.

White Perch on a crankbait.

I trolled a Rapala XR-10 in black and white on one rod, and a silver Rattle Trap on a second rod.  Trey trolled 2 shallow-diving crankbaits that he uses for Largemouth Bass fishing.  We started zig-zagging across the water, while heading South when I saw a group of boats gathered together on the East side of the Flats.  I suggested to Trey that we check it out, so we started paddling over.  At one point we hit some water about 4 feet in depth, and Trey said he hooked up with a Shad on one of his crankbaits.  I don't think I've ever heard of Shad hitting crankbaits, so that was interesting.  Trey got the skunk off him early, and apparently the fish was pretty decent in size (I didn't get to see it) so he was happy to have caught a fish at all today.  He wanted to see if he could catch any more, so he started casting his crankbait and working it in that area, and he started hooking up with some small white perch!  I couldn't believe it...it hasn't even been an hour yet and he's out-fishing me 3-to-0! 

28 inch beauty.

After snapping some pictures of his micro-catches, we continued on toward the group of boats when....I heard my rod bouncing up and down!  A fish on my rod with the X-Rap!  I took hold of the fishing rod, and fought for a good couple minutes to get the fish in.  When I caught sight of it, I knew it was an active, decent sized Rockfish with 2 treble hooks on its lips.  I've watched videos showing how to extract hooks from your flesh, but I didn't want to ever have to try it out on myself or anyone I know...so I was in no hurry to get the fish on board.  After a couple good drag-pulling runs, the fish was calm enough to get on the boat.  A nice, fat, 28 inch Rockfish.  My biggest fish ever!  From shore, pier and boat.  I took a couple pictures of the beauty, and Trey also took a couple pics of me and her together, then back to the water she went.  Luckily the fight didn't wear her out too much - she swam right off as soon as she got wet.

17" Bass on an XR-10

Look at all those holes on its lips.  This guy does not learn....

 Excited about the catch, I called Yak Fish and DaveFX35 to let them know about the conditions of the catch.  4 feet of water, paddling east, on an XR-10.  Hopefully with those facts, they can catch some fish too.  Unfortunately, for the next 5 hours we trolled all over the flats from 4 feet to 10 feet and not another Rockfish was caught by anyone in our group.  However, it still was not a bust.  Trey and I actually hooked up with a combined 5 Largemouth Bass in the middle of the flats!  Each time I hooked up with one I was hopeful that it was a Striped Bass because of how hard the initial hits were.  Susquehanna Bass are very stocky and can give up a good fight.  What was interesting was that all 5 of them were 17 inches long.  No shorter, no longer.  With the non-existent Rockfish, the Largemouth Bass were welcome by-catches of the day.

Trey's 17" Bass on a shallow-diving Crankbait.

We called it quits around noon, and spent about 30 minutes paddling back to the launch ramp.  We loaded up the gear and went to the outdoor grill that they have next to the park and marina.  The food was pretty good, and the atmosphere of being in the sun by the water with lots of people enjoying the day was great.  Though I wouldn't say the trip was a success in terms of catching loads of Rockfish, it was still a successful day in that neither of us got skunked, neither of us turtled, I got my personal best fish ever, and Trey is now a fan of Kayak Fishing.

I love pit beef, and I love hush puppies.

Occoquan River

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My sister-in-law is in town from St. Louis this week, and I thought it would be nice to have a fish fry this weekend.  I had plans to fish the lower potomac for some catfish and possibly some croakers, which people have been reporting.  When I found out that Ryan from the MKF forum was fishing for catfish this weekend too, I asked him if he wanted to meet up and fish together.  He had to be in Virginia today, so he was going to check out the Occoquan river.  Since I have not fished the Occoquan before, I was open to trying it out with him.

The area by the shore launch.

I got to the Occoquan Regional Park at 6:00AM, paid my $5 non-resident fee for launching, and started rigging up my kayak.  Ryan arrived shortly after, and we were in the water around 7.  We shared our plans for the day, and we were going to jig for some crappie by the docks of the marinas south of the 95 bridge, and then soak some bait to try for some catfish.

After passing the 95 bridge, we started casting along the shorelines on our way to the marina to see if we could hook up with a bass.  That was unfruitful for both of us, so we went to the docks and started jigging.  Within the first several minutes, I was getting nibbles on my shad dart rigged with a 2" gulp minnow.  I thought maybe the minnow might be too big, so I swapped it out with a 2" tube.  2 casts later, and I caught the first fish of the day.  A 15" largemouth bass.  I tried jigging some more in that row of docks, but I didn't get any more hits, so I moved on.

First fish of the day.

In the second row of docks, I went back to my gulp minnow and tried vertical jigging with it.  After several tries, I get a hit...and it turns out to be a big old channel catfish.  I was trying to catch crappie, not catfish!  Well, the catfish was a pretty good size, so I put it on my fish stringer and tried again.  Several minutes later, I get another hit...and it turns to be an even bigger channel catfish.  I never got to measure it, but I would say it was pushing 20 to 22 inches.  Again, it was not a crappie, but I did want to catch catfish today...on the stringer he went.  I was starting to think that my jigging technique was somehow only attractive to catfish and not crappie.  A few minutes later, and I hook up with another catfish!  Unbelievable!  Oh, and all this time, these fish were being caught on my ultralight rod with 5 lb test braid.  It was actually kind of fun catching these large fish on light tackle.  I really wanted to catch some crappie, so I decided to move on and try the next marina.

On the way to the next marina, I trolled a small rattletrap crankbait to see if anything would hit it.  I was doubtful that it would work because of my failure to catch anything on a crankbait at the flats earlier this week.  However, halfway to the marina, I had a fish on my crankbait.  It turned out to be a small striper.  I forgot to snap a pic, but it was small...like 15 inches.

Ryan and I got to the next marina, and we tried jigging again for crappie.  Ryan was actually pretty successful - he was catching a lot of crappie on his small gulp minnows.  I asked about his technique, and it sounded like he was doing exactly what I was doing back at the previous marina where I was catching the catfish.  I thought maybe it was the location that turned me into a catfish magnet, so I tried the vertical jigging again....and...I caught another catfish.  Several catfish, actually.  I was getting a little frustrated at this point, because I wanted to catch crappie!  At one point, I hooked up with a BIG fish.  It wouldn't surface, and it actually dragged me out of the bay I was fishing in and into the next one before showing itself.  It was a huge blue catfish.  I was excited about catching such a large fish, so I went to stick my lip gripper in its mouth, and I guess his small teeth rubbed the line the wrong way, because the line broke.

I originally had a 6lb test mono leader on my 5lb braid main line.  I had snapped it somehow while landing one of the earlier catfish, and lazily just tied my jig head directly onto the braid.  I am pretty sure that abrasion from the rough surface on the blue catfish's mouth was what caused my line to fail.  Never again will I make that mistake.  He was huge...

Since it was time to retie, I thought of something else to try.  Last year, when I was perch fishing, I had some success using soft plastic grubs on a spinner arm.  I tried adding the spinner arm to the gulp minnow, and voila!  I was starting to catch me some crappie.  I went through several more of these docks to try to catch some crappie worth eating.  There were a couple white perch in the mix of fish that I caught too, which was a pleasant surprise.  Eventually (inevitably) I hooked into another catfish, and that was when I decided I was done fishing here.  Catfish are fun to catch on ultralight tackle, but it's also frustrating when you're not targeting them.

Ryan and I moved around, casting our lures to the shoreline to see if we could catch some more bass.  We both ended up catching a couple bass, but none that were impressive in size.  I caught mine on the gulp minnow, and on the rattle trap crankbait.  The gulp minnow is so versatile...it'll catch anything!

At this point, we slowly started making our way back to the launch and stopped by the 95 bridge to see if we could catch any catfish.  I didn't have any success there, so after a little while I parted with Ryan and I went back to the launch.  I was packed up and on my way home by 1.

My kayak and gear at the end of the day.

Fishing the Occoquan was interesting - it was a lot more fun that I thought it might be.  I also caught 6 species of fish today, which is pretty cool when you consider that they were all caught in the same body of water.  I brought home a few of the catfish, crappie, and white perch and cleaned them for tomorrow's fish fry!

Tomorrow's Dinner.

Susquehanna Flats

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All the reports on the hot fishing up in the Susquehanna flats had me wanting to try it out.  I have never fished the flats before, and I have never targeted stripers from my kayak before.  I had to give it a shot!  May 3 was the last day before the Catch & Release season ends for stripers in the Susquehanna, so I took the day off work and went to the Flats.

I arrived at Tydings Memorial Park in Havre de Grace, MD around 3:00PM, where I bumped into Cliff from the MKF forum.  He was just coming in from fishing for the day, and he had also been fishing the flats everyday for the past week or so.  He had some pointers to share, so I was all ears.  Use a long crankbait with silver and blue on it.  He was sharing how he caught several fish around 30", and lost his lure on a fish that almost spooled him.  After losing his crankbait - the only one he had of that color combo and style - he didn't get another hit the rest of his time out  there.  Well, I didn't have any crankbaits with blue on them, but I did have a long crankbait that I rigged up on one of my rods last night. It was silver and black, but close enough, I thought.

The marina by the boat ramp.

When I launched, I tried going straight out into the flats from the boat ramp, but quickly found myself in very shallow water (< 1') that I almost got stuck in.  I reversed outta there, and saw that the bigger boats were going through the marina out the entrance to enter the flats.  I followed them out, and when I got a look at the flats,  I thought to myself "so much water, where do I start?"  I could see that there were about 15-20 boats in an area south of where I was, so that was where I headed.  It was kind of unnerving paddling out into the open water for the first time.  But the other boaters were courteous the entire day, and I never felt unsafe in my kayak.

All the boaters...I need a better camera.

When I got near the other boats, I saw that there were a lot of people hooking up around me.  Every couple seconds you would hear someone's drag letting out line because of a fish.  I quickly brought in my crankbait that I had trolled the whole way out, and cast it out to retrieve it manually.  Within the first couple of minutes I hooked up with a nice 20" rockfish. He flopped out of my boat before I could snap a picture, so I don't have proof of that catch... A couple casts later, I hooked into another one that was a little bigger than the first one, but he spit the hook next to the boat.  Rats!

Lots of fish!

The first 30-40 minutes was probably the most exciting...the fishing slowed down a lot after that. I could tell that the fish were around, because they were surfacing everywhere and I could see them on my fish finder.  They just were not taking any of my lures - crankbaits, BKDs, bass assasins, etc.  Well, that's not entirely true, I was biased toward the crankbait because of what Cliff told me, and I caught a couple small stripers here and there on it.

One of the smaller stripers.

Around 7:00PM, my line snapped on a cast and I lost my lucky crankbait. I didn't have any more crankbaits in that style, and the sun was starting to set, so I headed in.  By the end of the night, I caught maybe 4 or 5 stipers, and lost about 8.  The treble hooks on my crankbait were mashed down, so I think I was having a hard time keeping the fish on the hooks.

Fishing the Susquehanna flats was a neat experience.  It was fun fishing among all the gas boats out there, and keeping up with them (most of them - there were a few anglers who were doing really well compared to the rest of us).  It was also neat to see the various techniques that people were using to catch the striped bass - cranking crankbaits, trolling crankbaits, soft plastics, fly fishing from a boat... I have already marked my calendar for fishing the "Susky Flats" again next spring, the last week of April.

I love kayak fishing...