Fishing 10/6/03 from St George's Island to Ches Buoy 72

Capt Brady

New Member
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Wind was predicted to blow from the east 10-15kts, this morning . Consequently we departed the ramp at the St Georges Island bridge on the Md side and proceeded directly out towards Piney Point, Md. The tide was still coming in gently, and there was about 80% cloud cover. Found bait balls and skimmimg birds just outside the crab pots. We started a search for breaking fish going southward towards PLO along the 18 to 35ft dropoff on the Md side and saw lots of bay anchovy schools with nothing attacking them. We proceeded all the way down river until we got near the PRFC marker"F" which is right off Cornfield Pt. There we encountered a school of breakers that consisted of sub-legal stripers and small bluefish. We flyfished them with poppers and LTG with sluggoes until we were satisfied there were no seatrout or bigger fish in that mass. Then we traveled further southeastward found a couple more schools, same deal. Then we fished the stone riprap at PLO by the radar tower: nothing. Then we fished the bar out to the crab line buoy with nothing caught until we spotted a school of breakers working between the crab buoy and the PLO light. But as the tide was slightly moving at this point, the fish were fickle to stay up. We worked them over as previously stated, with about the same results.

By this time I was conversing with other charterboat captains that I suspected were chumming on the east side of the ships channel six miles away and I was being told that they were seeing breaking fish and birds about two miles away to the north and east of their position which they described as buoy 52. Now if you go look for buoy 52 on your charts, it ain't to the east of PLO. They were referring to where Old Buoy 52 used to be which I am not going to bother to define further, Anyway we pushed against a stiff easterly sea across and found those breakers that were being described to me on the radio, and frankly I was a bit disappointed in that they were not a legal size and they were very hard to stay on. The wind started to laydown a bit and we started a return route with hopes things would be different in the river when we got there as the tide would be running out strongly.

We were not disappointed. Found several flounder around the old CG dock. The park is currently closed due to damage from Isabel, so we drifted the entire riprap area around the point with keeper stripers and two lb bluefish being our reward.

But it was on the way back to St George's Island that our best fishing came. Again we were clued by breakers along the 18 to 35ft droppofff from Cornfield Harbor all the way to the mouth of Smith Creek. I'll be brief, there's loads of bait in there and lots of stripers and bluefish. We fished at least a dozen different schools and released everything including many keepers.
 
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