Nothing's Happening, June 2016

I've had a number of people ask me why I haven't updated the blog in a while.  Actually the reason is quite simple- I haven't been catching any fish.  It's prett ymuch been a perfect storm of mother nature (weather) and absence of fish.  Let's start with the weather, that will lead into the fish. We had a mild March, but an unusually cool/cold April, May, and persisting into June.  There was even an unprecedented late freeze 2nd week of May which conspired to kill all of my pears, cherries, and about 2/3 of my grapes. Some of the local orchards lost their entire crop of peaches, etc.  

As for the Chesapeake, this translated into a total no-show of most of the species which normally arrive late April to early May, including my beloved croaker.  In fact, as of my last trip out on June 18 I still had not caught a hardhead, trout, drum or otherwise.  The charter captains had not either, except for an occasional red or black drum.  Rockfish did show up well this spring, but as I've already explained I'm not really equipped to go out and chase the big ones, although I did make some unsuccessful attempts at fishing for them shallow water with soft crab.   The other part of the weather issue has been ongoing high winds, mostly out of the north/northeast.  I have had great difficulty finding a day where I was ready to fish where it wasn't blowing 25+.  This is the exact opposite of last year, where the fish and wind cooperated nicely beginning mid-June.  So, I'll stop making excuses and wrap this up.  I am planning to fish this coming weekend, beginning July 1.  The first pic below is my oldest son Brooks and his fiance Antoinette- we had a great time but only caught one small rock.  Below that is the lone white perch I put in the cooler last time out- haha.