via Tight Lined Tales of a Fly Fisherman: Pickerel in the Severn

Here is Morgan's report from our pickerel trip last week.

Tight Lined Tales of a Fly Fisherman: Pickerel in the Severn:
So the Chain Pickerel move into the rivers of the Bay every year at some point in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, becoming most active around the first or second week of December. I had the privilege of fishing with one of my good buddies Matt, author of The Hobie Life, on the back of his Hobie Pro Angler last week.

Not only was the wind strong (too strong to attempt to toss a fly), but the bite was too. After the last three fishing trips ending in a big old skunk, I was pretty discouraged and really wasn't ready to cast a line again. Fortunately, Matt got to talking about the Pickerel and got me pretty stoked.

With the air temp sitting around 45F, the water temp around 48F, and the wind gusts up to 35 mph, I threw on my neoprene waders and met Matt at one of the local boat ramps on Weems Creek where he had his beautiful and fully rigged Pro Angler in the water, ready to go. I had stopped at Angler's and picked up a pint of minnows and I brought along a few fly rods but decided to leave them in the car when the gusts became continuous. I grabbed my 6' Daiwa bass pole (fortunately the wind blew all the dust off it for me), and Matt supplied the 1/8 Jig Heads to hook the minnows on.

I hopped on the back of the 14' 'yak and we were off, minnows in the water right away. At the first shoreline, I rigged up and tossed my line and within the first 5 casts had hooked up on a fish. Unfortunately, the first 3 hookups turned into lost fish. I've caught many-a-pickerel in my day but never understood why they are so easily lost. The way Matt explained it to me, is that, due to their softer jaws, they need to be able to run a bit so the hook set is solid enough to allow you to bring the fish to hand. After working the shoreline for a bit and me losing about half a dozen of Matts jig heads on snags, we finally started to bring in fish. I was able to catch some footage on the GoPro before it broke (its being sent back this week for an exchange) and for those of you who follow us on Instagram andFacebook, you were able to see the photos I snapped of a few fish.

The largest of the day was about 21" and the smallest measured out at around 17.5". The Maryland citation size is 24" and one of the fish Matt lost by the boat was definitely going to be close to that two foot mark. With over a dozen fish brought in between the two of us, it made for an awesome outing and a great break of the huge skunk run I had going for me.

If you don't already follow Matt over at The Hobie Life, you should be, even if your not a 'yak kinda person, the man catches fish, there's no doubt about that.

Boom...Morgan

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Thank you to all the readers out there and I wish you a happy holiday season.

If you need any pointers on how to make a stellar Gingerbread House let me know....

Even has a kayak and paddle in the front yard!!!

And here are some of my awesome Christmas gifts from Elaina, check out Skinny Water Culture

Boredome leads to Fish Art

Here are some sketches I did last week during some downtime. I modeled most of my work after the artist Eric Estrada at I am Wase One Fly Fishing Art. ~ Enjoy

DIY Recipe - Buffalo Rockfish Dip

My good fishing buddy Ryan had made this recipe above so I asked him for it so I could make it to have during some of the Football games last week. So Elaina and I went to work to make some tasty snacks.

Cooked the rockfish until it was white and flakey. Then broke into pieces in order to add to the mix.

All mixed up and added tomatoes. Then baked on 450 degrees for about 20-25 minutes.

It was really tasty and I would suggest for anyone to give it a try if you have some rockfish still in the freezer.

Foggy pickerel

2013 Kayak Wars Comes to a Close

Overall, the 2013 season was a very successful one for me and kayak fishing. Not only was I able to get out and fish a lot but I was very fortunate to gain a number of relationships and partnerships with many individuals and companies in the kayak fishing community.

Our team for 2013 was called Snaggedline.com Snaggers. We had a very successful year and I was very fortunate to be ona team with some other passionate kayak fisherman. Ryan (Shadyfisher85) and Wayne (Chimo) were able to catch a lot of species this year! Our other team members ended up having busy years so they weren't able to fish as much, which is fine as we put together our team just to have a good time and hopefully help us work to catch a few more fish.

I was very happy with how we finished. I would have liked to have been able to catch a few more species myself, I didn't even get a striper over 20" which was disappointing, but oh well.

As a team we finshed in 9th in the Northeast Region for Total Inches combined for freshwater and saltwater species!!!! We also finished 18th Nationally in the Freshwater Division!!!

Individually I finished 8th in the Northeast for Freshwater species and finished with a combined 1300 points for both freshwater and saltwater.

Some of my other fishing buddies also had a great year. Jack's (Pinch), Mike (grilled), and Michael's (redfish12) team finshed a very solid 6th in the Northeast saltwater division. And each of them got over 1300 in points!!

I'm really looking forward to next year and hopefully many more fish to come!!!! Thanks for being on my team guys!!

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DIY - Rockfish Tacos Recipe

Slice fish into small pieces to make it easier to cook.

Use beer of choice to wet the fish pieces

Use fish fry batter of your choice, I used natural light and shorty's mild breading.

Cook on medium in frying pan in olive oil until gold and crispy.

Pick you favorite sides and mix for amazing fish tacos. I like corn, cheese, sour cream and taco sauce on soft tacos.

Enjoy and get out there and catch em before the season closes in Maryland.

2nd Place in the Eastport Yacht Club Rockfish Tournament

I got another call from Capt. Luke Thatcher looking for some crew to fish a single day tournament this past Saturday. We would be fishing on Luke's newest addition to his fleet, a Regulator 32. During the MSSA Tournament I had backed out on fishing one day so I owed it to him to get out there and help him catch some winning fish... and that's just what we did.

 

We launched out of Solomon's Island and headed south in a dense fog. The radar on the boat made driving in the fog quite managable but it was still somewhat stressful and erie.

We made it south near Point Lookout and started setting out the planer boards and all the rods, 24 in total.

 

 

We caught fish through the morning until about 11am, with the original goal of catching a fish before we even got all the rods out.

Our team included Capt. Luke, his dad, myself, and Lukes Chesapeake Bay retriever Marlin. We had the teamwork down perfectly.. Mr. Thatcher and I took turns reeling and fighting the fish, Luke would grab the leader and whoever didn't reel manned the net.

We were 9 for 9 and didn't lose a fish all day. All 9 of the fish were over 36" with our largest officially measuring in a 39.75", which happened to be .75" shorter than the 1st place fish. So we finished 2nd and we won all the calcuttas, so overall it was a great day for fishing checking in 3 fish.

We tried to to keep our fish alive all day in the livewell so we could release them after checking them in, but unfortunately the fish just didn't have enough kick to swim off on their own. It was a little upsetting but we tried our best to release them.

Yesterday's trip preview

We caught 9 stripers over 36"