That's a thread title I have been waiting to write for a while now! We have an awesome spring weather wise and I already forgot about that lousy winter. Enough of that. Lets talk about fishing in the Merrimack River!
Went out Tuesday afternoon for a quick pass with my buddy Capt. Pete before a storm rolled in. We had heard of a few schoolies caught out on the beach front from a day or two before and wanted to explore a bit. Pete was the lucky one that day as he picked up the first striper of the year on Manolin. A decent sized schoolie around 18 - 20 inches. Bigger than the mirco bass we were catching last year.
After running some errands Friday afternoon, I was able to get out for an hour at the turn of the incoming tide and was rewarded with EPIC topwater striper fishing. Took out my brother and buddy Pat and we nailed about 40 stripers between the three of us and we were the only boat around! All on topwater! It looked like a scene out of National Geographic with all the birds, bait, and busting stripers everywhere. These fish were a little bigger ranging from 23 - 27 inches with the FIRST TWO KEEPERS of the year in the mix! From what I know, these were the first 2 keepers from a boat in 2015! One for Pat and one for me! May 15th is now the earliest date I have caught a keeper! I caught some great video on the V.360 Camera which I will be editing tonight for you all to enjoy!
I poked around this morning as well on the opposite tide (turn of the outgoing) and got into some nice feeds of smaller 18 - 22 inch fish. I caught 6 fish on my first 7 casts before I started experimenting with some new lures trying to lure a keeper out of the mix. They were getting popped, but were a little too big for the fish to handle. I was in this feed for about 30 minutes before it died down and then had a few smaller feeds pop off. All in all I ended up with roughly 15 stripers for the day, with topwater spooks being the winning ticket.
It was a relief to see the numbers and different sizes of stripers. I didn't see many feeds like this early in the season last year and felt more like the past few years.
So here we are 2015 Striper season! I have a couple Newburyport charters in the afternoon this upcoming week vying for more light tackle stripers and I will also take some time to get square with mackerel!
Video and Pics to come.
Tight Lines,
Capt. Chris