The red hot live lining action came to a screeching hault around mid August and forced us to go looking to find our fish. By looking, I mean looking for breaking fish (schools of fish feeding on the surface). Once found the action begins… Trolling 6 rods rigged with diving planars and small spoons produces non-stop action when trolled in and around schools of breaking fish. We catch a variety of keeper and undersized Rockfish, Spanish Mackeral, and Bluefish every time we pass through a school. Most days we have been catching our limit of Rockfish, 20 to 50 Spanish Mackeral, and 10 to 30 Bluefish. Not to mention 50+ undersized Rockfish.
The bottom fishing in and just outside the Patuxent River was great for good sized Spot and a few Croaker up until the 2nd week of September. Since then we have been catching mostly small Spot and a few Trout, with a few of both being of keeper size.
We have not done any Flounder fishing since the last report due to where we are catching our trolling fish and the abundance of Spanish Mackeral, which have been very reliable.
Last week we gave live lining Spot another try and we did very well catching our limit of nice sized Rockfish (19″ to 28″) very quickly some days. Other days they did not bite as good so we resorted to trolling breaking fish and did very well. The presence of breaking fish sure is nice this year. It is a solid back-up plan if live lining does not produce and a great way to finish out the day when live lining does work well.
September is turning out to be a very solid month of fishing and October should be much of the same.