June 2, flats filled with finicky fish, mouth monsters this morning

02 Jun June 2, flats filled with finicky fish, mouth monsters this morning

Reports from the Boat guys are this:

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Went to Joppa this morning about 4:30am and found dead calm waters where you could see the pods of fish moving all around. Many, many pods, but they were refusing most offerings, from live eels, to topwater, sluggos, and flies. (We heard that later in the tide the fishing was excellent on the west side of the flats near the channel. Must have been good, guessing by the number of boats there.) Bugged out of Joppa about 5:30 and hit the mouth of the river on the outgoing. There, the bass were much more cooperative. We were met at sunrise by big flocks of terns and gulls working the surface. They seemed to be on sand eels or some other small bait. There were sporadic surface feeds by schoolie bass.

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Then the rare sight of flocks of Gannets dive bombing the river at about the #5 buoy. They got thicker and thicker, co-mingled with the terns and gulls and the bass really started to go off about 6:30, or half tide on the outgoing. Sluggos were the preferred meal of the bass, with small flies also bringing them in. From then on we just shadowed the terns as they moved around the green barrels chasing fish. We would find a pod, get 3-4 fish and they would go down, zoom to a new location and come up again. All topwater action. Unweighted white sluggos worked best.

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All told we caught and released about 40 bass, most around keeper size, with a top fish at 37″ on a sluggo, as well as a 33″ linesider on the fly. Best bass day my boat has had since 2006.

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We understand that the surf/river fishermen also had a good time this morning, especially between the sandbar and Captain’s lady. Both plugs and bait were working. Get out there, the bass are in thick.