April 9, 2024
It’s a curious thing that we might learn something about fishing structure from Edward Teach, dba Blackbeard the Pirate, or more precisely, from physical changes around his late ship, the Queen Anne’…
November 29, 2022
A varied array of natural, accidental, and artificial reef building bottom features marked by blue circles on Chart 1 are available for sportfishing off the southern end of the Delaware – Cape…
October 9, 2022
When we presented The Cell in the March 2020 issue of FishTalk, the Bathymetric Attributed Grid (BAG) Color Shaded Relief data layer, essentially side-scan sonar-like imaging, wasn’t available for…
October 25, 2021
Nautical charts from the late 1990s show a large circular fish haven about 12 miles east of Rudee Inlet… yet there’s none charted there today. Why wasn’t this reef folded into the Virginia Marine…
October 10, 2021
Wrecks are artificial reef sites that attract fish — period — and there are plenty of Chesapeake Bay reefs as well as many found off the coast. Sure, some sites are better than others and which are…
June 18, 2021
In early 2020, Wolf Trap Lighthouse was listed for sale (again). Want to own a lighthouse? Located off Horn Harbor, Wolf Trap Lighthouse is named for Wolf Trap Shoal. The shoal was named for H.M.S.…
April 25, 2021
The sky was clear and visibility unlimited on a dark October night in 1978, when the Coast Guard Cutter Cuyahoga was lost in the Chesapeake Bay’s main stem off Smith Point. The 51-year-old, 125-foot-…
July 20, 2020
Spadefish are one of the most under-rated sportfish in our region: they’re present in large numbers over wrecks and fishing reefs close to shore all summer long; they make for great table fare; and…
February 10, 2020
Step aboard a boat full of tautog sharpies, drop your rig to bottom, and start bouncing the weight up and down. Know what happens next? Everyone aboard will point at you and laugh. What gives? Unlike…
December 12, 2019
Anyone who loves Chesapeake Bay fishing should know about Cherrystone Reef, which is charted between depth contour lines and where bottom variations are prominent, even though it's not as famous as…
October 7, 2019
Inspired by a fishing trip to the Northern Neck Fish Haven (detailed in Pipe Dream: Reef Building with Nested Pipes), a popular chumming destination where we succeeded in pulling a school of stripers…
May 2, 2019
Last month we looked at Southern Maryland fishing reefs, resulting from the Maryland DNR Artificial Reefs Program. Virginia also has many reefs anglers should know about. Located southeast of the San…