Well yesterday was my favorite day of the year...the day when "Manolin" goes back into the water and the official start of the fishing season in Newburport, MA. This time of year is a great look into how nature works. Increasing light levels, changes in wind patterns, moon cycles, and the warming of the ocean water trigger mass migrations of fish up the coast into our home waters of Ipswich Bay, the Merrimack River, and Hampton Harbors. We have sand eels, rain bait, shad, winter flounder, herring, and striped bass coming up through the coast. Not to mention our incredible spring haddock fishery with the chance of catching a cold water porbeagle shark! Please enjoy the following post with all the new announcements for Manolin Charters in Newburyport this year!

The feedback of the herring runs has been outstanding so far this year with the alewives returning first, which were followed by the blue back herring. The stripers will not be far behind! Last year my first fish was on May 4th, but that was more the exception than the rule. Generally, we get into good number of schoolie stripers around the 10th - 15th and I plan my early trips accordingly. The last three season have given us super fast paced action where 100 - 200 fish days were not uncommon. With ocean temps creeping up on 50 degrees (the magic number), they should be here any day. This afternoon I will take my first stab at it for 2018.

The Minn Kota Ulterra Trolling Motor is going to be a Deadly Addition to Manolin! The stripers, mackerel, and sharks don't stand a chance now!

Some updates to the boat this year will greatly increase your enjoyment while fishing on Manolin Charters. We paired up with Johnson Outdoors, who owns Minn Kota Motors and Humminbird electronics, and now have some new goodies to play with. I'm telling you guys, this Ulterra trolling motor will be a GAME CHANGER allowing us to fish away from the fleet in more secluded spots and to allow great bait presentations to put a fat striper on the end of your line! Paired up with the Humminbird Solix 12" screen and its amazing MEGA Side Imaging, the Merrimack Striped Bass will have no place to hide!

Big order came in from Okuma! Highest quality gear for the clients of Manolin Charters!

We are revamping our reel line up as well as we have partnered with Okuma Fishing Tackle to pair with our custom rods. For those in the know, Okuma's conventional reels are the best around with the greatest engineering minds, excellent machining, and use of top shelf materials. I'm very proud to outfit the boat with Okuma equipment. My returning customers are going to love the new reels when tussling with big stripers, angry sharks, and winching in haddock!

Okuma Metaloid 5-S all spooled up and ready to tackle some striped bass! We also added Cortez rod/reel combos for haddock and Makaira 50's for sharks!

Now for our biggest announcement to date, we are expanding as a company! My very close friend and fishing partner, Capt. Mike Fallon is joining the team with his new 21 ft Parker Center Console. Mike has been a charter captain for over 10 years, but spent the last 5 fishing every morning recreationally for stripers in his 16 ft Alumacraft. This dude knows the river as well as anyone out there. He will specialize in light tackle and fly fishing, but is also a ninja live bait fisherman.

Manolin Charters is proud to introduce a second captain to the fleet! Capt. Mike Fallon is a BEAST and will specialize in Early Morning Trips on his new 21 FT Parker! $350 for up to 3 People for 5 AM - 8:30 AM Weekday mornings. He will also help out… — Manolin Charters is proud to introduce a second captain to the fleet! Capt. Mike Fallon is a BEAST and will specialize in Early Morning Trips on his new 21 FT Parker! $350 for up to 3 People for 5 AM - 8:30 AM Weekday mornings. He will also help out on some weekends as well.

Mike will run some special trips for those guys who love getting out at first light. He will be running early morning trips from 5 AM - 8:30 AM during the weekdays and take some overflow for myself on the weekends! The price with be $350 for the early morning weekdays and the $450/$600 for a 4.5/6.5 hour trip on the weekends. Keep a look out on FB and Instagram for some possible shared early morning trips as well.

It's never too early for Capt Mike who is as good with a camera as a fishing rod!

Until Capt. Mike figures out a new name for his boat...I'm referring to it as "Mini Manolin!". It is a 21 ft Parker with special features to allow for plenty of casting room for fly fisherman!

A few more important notes before I let you go. Due to the extra weight of the trolling motor and batteries, this year we are maxing out at 4 anglers (Other than the couple groups that already booked with 5) for our trips. Also, if you are interest I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you book your trips for the summer within a week or two as we are running out of morning dates especially. Capt. Mike will be able to take on some weekend trips and will definitely specialize in the early morning weekday stuff, but please don't wait for reports. Last year I was too busy to post reports frequently, my last report for the season was June 8th. So give me text, email, or call to set up a date as soon as possible.

Thank you everyone and here is to a great start to the 2018 season!

Tight Lines,

Capt Chris

Wow did this past season fly by! I can't believe my last report was mid-July, but that doesn't mean the inshore or offshore fishing was bad, in fact, it was OUTSTANDING. Before I begin my 2016 season recap, I just want to thank all of those who came to Newburyport to fish with Manolin Charters. I've made some tremendous new friends this year with whom we can share memories together forever. Thank you all for fantastic attitudes, generosity, and reminding me everyday why I love doing what I do. We had an ridiculously busy season this year and it couldn't have happened without the repeat customers, word of mouth, and referrals. Hard to be believe that next year is already year 5 and I have seen some of my early customers' kids grow up through high school and college!! I feel old now, but am thrilled to be a small part of their life that they enjoy.

So lets break down the Merrimack River charter fishing reports chronologically as always.

May - Unreal start to the season! The mass invasion of micro stripers all up and down the coast had the striper fishing community buzzing from NJ to Maine! From May 8th - May 30th (and way beyond when we started targeting keeper fish) it was utter ridiculousness. No matter the tide, time of day, wind pattern we were catching schoolie stripers at a fish per cast rate for 3 hrs straight all on super light tackle. One memorable trip in particular was when 7 year old Elle Shields caught 92 stripers on artificials on Joppa Flats....all by herself! It is a great tune up to get back on the water with friends in a low pressure environment. The goal here is light tackle and even had quite a few customers break out their fly rods! I can't even begin to describe the mass quantity of fish that are here now. This year class of stripers will keep returning to the Merrimack River throughout their lives and are going to make N ewburyport even more of a fishing destination than ever before.

Steve M with a nice fish and cool picture!

June - The keeper stripers had moved in. We caught our first keeper on Memorial Day (If you want to be the first to catch a 30"+ fish, typically your best shot is Memorial Day weekend) and it was on from there. Newburyport and Merrimack River fishing was in full swing! Mackerel were in thick and fishing was great. We did have some trips we had to move due to weather throughout the month, but none the less fishing was fantastic with constant rods bending, keepers going home, and bait easy to get. Well, that was until Saturday June 25th with longtime customer JJ and his crew....Quick story about our trip....So the days leading up we had been putting a hurting on stripers, like 30 - 50 fish days, mostly because of all the tinker mackerel you want. So JJ's trip comes rolling around and, wouldn't know, you can't find a mackerel anywhere. My phone was going off with calls and texts, I was reaching out to buddies on the water, and the chatter on the radio was comical when people were describing the straight up disappearance of the Roanoke Mackerel. Luckily, we found a small school and some caught some other baits and had a great day of striper fishing. Well, the funny part of this happened about a week later when the OSEARCH (Great White Shark Tag and Release Program) posted that one of their first ever tagged Great Whites "pinged" in 30 ft of water by the buoy just outside the Merrimack River on.....June 25th. That one creature sent the mackerel beelining further offshore where we would have to venture to get our baits for the beginning of July.

Dan always seems to bring the fish with him when he comes out! Here he is tight to a big blue shark!

July - The past few seasons have shown us that July is starting to rival June for primetime Striper fishing. One of the major reasons is the baitfish abundance in our waters has been amazing the past few seasons. This year, for the first time in my adult life, we actually had pogies on a consistent basis for pretty much the rest of summer. It was really cool and led to a fantastic big striper bite later in the season. A year ago or two, the quota for commercial pogies (also called bunker or menhaden) was cut down 10%. That 10% gave us millions of fish our area has not seen in years. Let's hope it continues.

Back to the stripers. Fishing was great on the whole. We did have to run far to get bait for the first week or so, but with the longer ride a lot of the times we saw cool marine life on the way out. You definitely learn to appreciate your lifestyle when, for example, 13 year old Nate from Ohio sees the first whale of his life, gets up close and personal with an Ocean Sunfish, catches a million mackerel at the Isles of Shoals, then has to reel a striper every two minutes for 4 hours! I love giving people an opportunity to experience a day like that.

Capt. Jay Shields of Stellwagen Media Fame here with a 48" striper! Stellwagen Media is creating a video for Manolin Charters of footage from this past season. be on the look out!

Toward the end of the month after the moon, the big girls started arriving. We caught a bunch of 38+" from July 18th fish on including a 51" 42# and a 48" 37#. Also, I had a writer from Sport Fishing Magazine come aboard and write an article (I'll post on that in another blog) which was a really neat experience.

We began shark fishing the third week of July....and.....WOW. WOW WOW. We found a stretch of water where we were just crushing sharks. We AVERAGED 13 sharks per trip! Ok, now a few of these trips were cut short because the crew had had enough! In addition to the numbers, we finally had legit opportunities with three separate mako encounters. Each one ending in heartbreak. My god. How cool? We rarely get makos in any numbers here, but what those three fish do (A fourth, my buddy John landed a 400#er on a trip we split up into 3 boats) is allow me now to pattern them out and find out where they like to hide around here. This sharking extended well into September.

Mike with the final striper for Manolin Charters. A sweet 40" right off the beach in 6 ft of water!

August - Great by August standards. I was offshore most of the time, but was still inshore every few days. The shark fishing remained bonkers, the striper fishing was still good but dying down a bit. early in the month I started fishing the Parker more with some great success, then all hell broke loose along the Plum Island beach front. My favorite way to fish is to slow troll mackerel, but we haven't had that opportunity the past couple years. The one thing that does suck about this fishing though is that it can be lights out/ can't miss fishing then absolutely dead, then on, then off again. Unfortunately, my time was short lived as I started football camp and the rest of the guys on the water were crushing fish well into September. Once football started, I did another striped bass and two offshore charters. Really wished I could have made it out there more, but luckily it was worth it as our team went 9 - 2 and finished as the #4 team in state (via Boston Globe and Herald)!

A few other quick notes from the 2016 season:

So many young kids on the boat this year! It was so great to see a new generation of younger fisherman from 4 - 12 years old putting away the stupid Xbox and iphone and embracing the outdoor lifestyle! I hope its a trend on Manolin Charters that continues.
Also, I had a few groups of 15 - 17 year kids who pooled up their money and came out fishing with their buddies! I thought that was super neat as well. Each time, I was surprised to see 4 "kids" and no adults. They called/emailed and booked the trips themselves and were awesome to have aboard.
The conservation attitude my clients showed this year in particular. Most trips weren't necessarily to fill the cooler. Most groups opting to keep only one or two 28 - 32" fish and letting bigger fish and more keepers (even if they were allowed more) go. As I grow as a guide, I really appreciate this attitude of just taking what you will eat immediately and preventing having 10 month old striper filets in the freezer. I will never forget the god awful 2014 and 2015 seasons (even tho 2015 was a little better) where fishing was very, very difficult. I never want that to happen again. That being said, I still have no problem if you want to keep your legal limit!

Good day striper fishing in mid August whith many, many others released!

What's new for 2017?

School's Out Special - Weekday Afternoons May 8th - June 2nd
- $50 per person Open Boat Light Tackle Casting to Schoolie Stripers
- Get back on the water after a long weekend on the cheap
- Super fun, lots of laughs, and low stress style of fishing the back rivers
- Beautiful landscapes
May 20th, and 21st (27th and 28th will be open to striper fishing as well)
- Offshore Haddock and Porbeagle Shark Trips! Weekends in May Only
- These are the only 4 dates where we will specifically target haddock and try to grab a porbeagle shark offshore on Jeffrey's Ledge. If interested call ASAP
- $750 up to 4 people
New Handle Upgrade on our Shimano Striper Reels
- Repeat customers are going to love the new feel of these handles I put on my striper reels. They are much, much more comfortable and powerful. You will immediately feel the difference. The reels themselves are perfect for our fishery, but the handles always bothered me. Well, this winter we had them upgraded to give you the best experience possible
New Matching Custom Mackerel Rods
- am getting back into rod building and decided to do a make over on my mackerel set ups first since they definitely take the biggest beating of all my gear. New reels and cool olors
- Designed to easily store our long mackerel rigs easily and safely
A huge Engel Cooler
- Mounted to the deck in the bow like a "coffin box"
- Keeps your fish ice cold for your trip and hold ice for up to 5 days
- Roto molded so you can sit on it on the way out, while we drift, or stand on to cast or take pictures
Photography
- I'm working hard to increase my photography skills (youtube videos, books, talking with photographers) to capture your trip the best I possibly can. I'm practicing on everything right now and hope to buy a nice camera soon that will live on the boat. Of course, I will send/post your pictures for no additional charge.