Lower Bay Fishing Reports

Lower Chesapeake Bay Fishing Report, January 14 Update:

Cold, harsh weather this week has made fishing difficult across much of the Bay and finding people who fished this week was difficult, so we’re afraid this week’s report will be a short one. There’s was scuttlebutt of good striper catch and release action near Point Lookout with many fish up into the 40-inch range at least one day this week when the wind was down and the temps were in the 40s, but we weren’t able to verify it first-hand.

On the Eastern Shore, anglers have been hitting the millponds for pickerel where they haven’t been iced over. Last weekend Contributor Eric Packard was already encountering partially ice-covered waters over there and while the recent mid-40s days should have kept those waters open, the cold on the way may change that. Bass have also been biting, although the bite is reportedly slow. Those who braved the cold in search of catfish were rewarded this week and reports from the upper Potomac and Rappahannock included a couple icy fish that came in upwards of the 30-inch mark as well as many in the 20s and teens.

Lower Chesapeake Bay Fishing Report, January 7 Update:

Welcome to 2022 anglers! It may be a new year but the story in this chunk of the Bay remained more or less the same, at least up until the storms hit: big stripers are chewing on jigs and hitting trolled umbrellas. There is, of course, one big difference in that ALL areas are now closed to harvest and any rockfish caught must immediately be released. Several readers reported that the Smith Point zone held solid numbers of fish in the mid-20s up into the 30s, sill occasionally marked by diving birds, and sometimes larger 40-inch fish pop up as well. Boss BKDs on 1.5-ounce heads were fingered as a top pick and the folks at Anglers add that Zman Streakz XL are working well, too.

If you want fish for the cooler—or you want to catch something even larger than those rockfish—the upper James, Rap, and Potomac continue to offer endless opportunities for catfish fishing. For the past month or so a week hasn’t gone by without photo-documented reader reports of monster cats from 30 to 80 pounds showing up. The turbulent weather early this week may have temporarily put a hold on the best action (we heard from a couple of readers who found the fishing slow recently and blue cats in particular are known to get finicky when big fronts push through) but if there’s a more reliable fishery to hook into a winter monster, we can’t imagine what it could be.