First things first- a very brief detail on what I caught last week. This would be June 17. I caught some nice but windy (or course) weather, the right tide, and one free day, and I didn't waste it. I kept things pretty basic and fished on the back side of Deal Island. Target species: Rockfish and Speckled trout. A blistering south wind made it necessary to find some protected shallow water, challenging on the south side of the island. I spent 2-3 hours throwing soft crab, only to be frustrated. Last move was back toward the dock. On the way back I found a protected little pool, and since the tide was now high, figured I would give it a shot. Boom!! The 22-inch rock put up a nice thrashing fight in 4 feet of water. After following this with a few smaller fish, the day was done.
Next up, the family joins me for fishing June 22 and 24. This time we dodged really crappy rainy and windy weather, and late day low tides. June 22 with Von and Darko yielded a few small rockfish and lots of skates and rays. June 24 I fished with my daughter Kara and her bf TJ. This was in the Manokin at high tide, middle of the day and hot hot hot. Kara caught a nice 15" speckled trout, and TJ put 2 really nice big white perch in the cooler. I can't count how many small rock they caught and threw back.
The lack of croaker is really concerning. Looks like 2nd year in a row they will be a no-show through June. This is seriously a bummer, and downright disturbing to me. I remember how back in the '80's they were scarce, but back then we had plenty of sea trout. Sigh,......
Quick recap of Memorial Day first. It was cool and rainy, like most of our spring. I got the boat out once- on Memorial Day, with my buddy Dan. It was a bright sunny day, rather warm, and we launched at noon. We fished the waters all around South Marsh Island, using soft crab exclusively. Two rock and two speckled trout, but nothing to brag about.
Fast forward to June 9. Opting for a change of scenery, I thought we would fish the shallow waters of the Manokin River, looking for speckled trout. I've heard in years past that a lot of specks are caught here in the spring. Dan was once again my co-pilot. We launched at 2pm, just preceding the peak high tide (at Chance). I knew there was a creek just north of Rumbley, which actually cut back behind Rumbley. My thinking was that this would be a good place to fish on a falling tide, as the bait fish should be pouring out of the creek, with rockfish and trout ready to ambush them. Turned out to be a pretty good calculation, as we turned 3 hours of fishing into a pretty good meal. I absolutely love sea trout and speckled trout, so I was thrilled that we could take home 2 decent trout. Dan caught the larger at 17", mine was 15", We threw a fair number of sub-14" trout back, in addition to countless small rock. The next day, I figured we would get out a little earlier and catch some more of that first part of tide, since day before we had started catching them immediately. Well, as most fishermen know- no two days are the same. The fishing was far slower than the day before. Notable is that the water was also 3+ degrees warmer, jumping from 73.5 to 76.5 F. Still we managed to put a 15" trout and a nice white perch into the cooler after releasing a bunch of schoolie rock, so no skunk. Pic is a proud Dan displaying his first keeper speckled trout on June 9.
