FISHING NEWS

The black drum bite is red hot. The red drum bite is not but it is still pretty good. Good catches of red drum continue to come from the seaside of the Eastern Shore. Fisherman's Island Inlet is still the best location. More fish will be caught on the Inner Middle Ground Shoals over the next couple of weeks. The black drum bite is just ridiculous with huge fish being caught in the buoy 13 and buoy 16 area. Chowder and sea clams are the top baits. This bite is at its peak just in time for this week's Black Drum World Championship. Cobia are on their way. Fish have been caught out of Hatteras which usually means that some will be here in a couple of weeks. Memorial Day Weekend is typically the kickoff of our cobia season. Spadefish are here now though they have not been very cooperative yet. They should start to feed better as the waters warm a bit more over the next couple of weeks. Flounder fishing has been hit and miss with some good catches from around 36A, the seaside inlets of the Eastern Shore and around Back River Reef. Croaker are biting in the James and York Rivers. Speckled trout are available at all of the speckled trout spots though bluefish are making it a challenge to catch them. Some big striped bass are falling to live bait at the CBBT. Offshore bottom fishing remains very good. A bit to our south, the tuna bite has really turned on out of Oregon Inlet. Good numbers of yellowfins and bigeyes are being caught.

The weekend of May 17 will be a busy one. The Black Drum World Championship will be held May 16-18. For details, visit:  http://www.esvachamber.org/festivals/drumfish/ . The Hunt for Hard Heads club challenge is on May 17 and the Wilcox Bait and Tackle Triple Threat Tournament starts on May 17. For more info visit: http://www.pswsfa.com/tournaments.htm .

Cobia are on their way and so are the cobia tournaments. The Jimmy Roger’s Hampton Creek Cobia Tournament is scheduled for June 13-14. Many of our club members fish this popular event each year. For information visit: http://www.hamptoncreekcobiatournament.com/ .

May 11 from Wes Blow: I had a pretty early start this morning. I put out a Messick Pt. this morning and dropped the anchor near buoy 13 this morning before the sun was up. First stop I did not catch a fish. So I moved a little and reset the anchor. I was using chowder clams, fresh and then I used some from my last trip that I had salted down. Either way worked fine. Shortly after that I had the first bite on my spinning rod, this took quite a while to get in. Once I had that fish in the boat and trying to get my camera out I had another bite before I could get a picture and get the first one back in the water. Got a few pictures and put the fish back in the water and got them both swimming away. Few minutes later another fish on. I was only bringing in the rod closest to the boat when I would get one on, so as the fish would go from one side of the boat to the other I would have to go under all the lines still out. It was about 8:30 and I had planned to leave by nine so I picked up, but as I was slowing moving watching the bottom I decided to give a another short try. I think it was about 9 before the second wave of bites started. I landed 3 more and lost one because I had one fish on and trying to work the second pole the fish finally got off. It did stay on until after I had the first one in the boat, got a picture and released it then picked the rod back up to bring it in and after 15 seconds lost it. Then it slowed down but I had some more bites, one came off and the last fish I caught was the biggest for the day. Ended up with 7 boated fish from about 41 inches to what I will call 50.5 inches. No critters at all. This was my personal best day of Drum fishing, and yes the weather did get sloppy. I left about 11:30 and surfed the big waves back to Messick.

May 10, I went back out after the drum. Dave and Chris Boyce and Charles and Hunter Southall were my crew. We split our time between trolling spoons for reds and soaking bait for black drum and red drum. We did nothing on the troll. We set up for reds on the ocean side of the high rise and caught black drum. Big black drum. We never caught a red even with moving around and changing over to hard crabs as bait. We did catch some nice blacks though. We boated a total of 12 and could have caught more if we had continued to target them. Only one was not long enough for a citation and that one was just a little under. Dave Boyce caught our largest at 54 inches long. Everyone onboard registered at least one citation. It was great watching all of the other PSWSFA members around us with multiple hook-ups.

May 10, Bob Manus fished next to us. He landed three black drum up to 54 inches long before he had enough of them and moved onto 9-Foot Shoal looking for red drum. He did not have any luck with the drum.

May 10, Danny Forehand and Steve Martin fished for black drum. They boated 6 black drum up to 50.25 inches long.

May 10, David Brabrand joined us for the drum bite. They caught eight black drum. Seven were large enough for citations.

May 10, Gary Donaldson and Stan Simmerman fished the Poquoson River and caught a bunch of croaker to about 12 inches long.

May 7 report from Hatteras: Things have been a little slow for the TUNA TRACKER this spring, but fishing is picking up. We got into the big dolphin this Wed. In the deep, roughly 200 to 500 fathoms. Lots of weed lines. We found big dolphin on one weed line and pounded it all afternoon. Nathan's fish was on the troll, and mine was "bailing." The tuna bite has been off and on. So far, we haven't been in the right place at the right time. We briefly had a big blue on Wed. The hook didn't stick, which was a good thing, because it was a really big fish and our 50 wide's wouldn't have held it for long.

May 7, Wes Blow fished at buoy 13. He managed to catch a 46 inch black drum.

May 7, Capt. Jim Brincefield took a party offshore bottom fishing. They boated 94 sea bass, 13 blueline tilefish, some bluefish, and 53 blackbelly rosefish. The big news is their big blackbelly weighed in at 4 pounds 3 ounces. If approved, this will replace the 3 pound 11 ounce current world record caught by Bob Manus on the Healthy Grin. www.captjim.com

May 7, I met Charles and Hunter Southall at Messick as soon as I could get there after work. It was blowing and the only bait that we had were some left-over chowder clams from Tricia's and my trip on Monday. We went anyway and got over to buoy 13 before sundown. We cracked open all the clams we had, put our some baits and Hunter was hooked up in minutes. While he was fighting that fish, we get another bite and Charles is hooked up. During the sunset, each boated and released a citation-sized black drum. We talked about going for reds (we also had some left-over crabs) but Charles had to be at work early today and it was a school night for Hunter so we came on in. Good quick trip.

May 5, Tricia and I ran out in the afternoon to buoy 13. I know they have been catching some nice blacks inside the Great Machipongo Inlet but I did not think that we would need to run that far. In short order, Tricia was hooked up to our first black drum. We ended up catching and releasing 3 and came in early. We were using chowder clams for bait. Our largest was 50 inches long. There were a few other boats out there but none were close enough to see if anyone else was catching.

May 5, Kayak Kevin fished Fisherman's Island Inlet and caught two red drum up to 47 inches long.

May 5, Capt. Jim Brincefield took a party offshore. They caught some sea bass, his first ever golden tilefish and a bunch of blackbelly rosefish. www.captjim.com

May 4, I went after red drum with Charles Southall. Also fishing with us was David Brabrand and Wes Blow. We fished Fisherman's Island Inlet. We only caught a single smooth dogfish. Well, VIMS wanted one so they got it. Ric Burnley was near us in his motor boat. They caught 3 reds and his kayak buddies paddling around also caught a couple of big reds. We saw a small black caught and that was as close as it got for us. It was a pretty day and it was the first time any of us had fished with Wes. I had been wanting to. The guy is a fish catching machine. He is relatively new to our fishing club and his detailed reports over the past couple of years have been great. He will target some new fish for him, write about everything that goes wrong, but after a couple of trips he catches some beast of a fish. He has made some amazing catches. Not on this trip but it was good to finally get to fish with him.

May 3, Ric Burnley fished Fisherman's Island. They had 4 drum bites and landed two big red drum.

April 27, I went fishing with Chris and Dave Boyce. We did some wreck hopping in the Triangle Reef area. We caught 19 tautog up to 21 inches long.

April 26, Danny Forehand took his new Albemarle out for its maiden fishing trip. They hit Fisherman's Island and caught a 47-inch red drum which was released for the boat's first citation.

April 26, Ric Burnley and his kayak krazy buddies fished Fisherman's Island Inlet. They all managed to catch at least one trophy red drum.

April 26, Charles Southall fished for tautog and they caught a limit of fish up to 6 pounds. They also caught a 15 pound black drum on the wreck. They then went over to Fisherman's Island where they caught and released a 47-inch red drum.

April 26, Mike Avery did some offshore bottom fishing. They caught 4 golden tilefish up to 35 pounds, 4 wreckfish, some sea bass, blackbelly rosefish, and a collection of other bottom fish.

April 25, Tricia Neill ran to the mouth of the Poquoson River and bottom fished for an hour. Using bloodworm, she caught a dozen spot and croaker. She also caught a 22-inch flounder on a little piece of bloodworm.

April 24, Capt. Brincefield ran one of his offshore trips. They caught 158 keeper sea bass including some over 5 pounds, 31 blueline tilefish up to 9 pounds, and a few bluefish including a 37.75 inch fish released for a citation. www.captjim.com

April 23, Steve Mattson hit the CBBT for some catch and release striped bass action. He was not disappointed. In 4 hours of fishing the light line near the 1st island, he caught 21 stripers up to 41 inches long. Bluefish in the 20-22 inch range also joined the party.

April 20, David Brabrand fished out of Hatteras. They caught 10 yellowfin tuna and two wahoo.

April 20, we ran offshore and did a little bottom fishing. I guess with all of the wind, these fish had not been touched in a while because the fishing was ridiculous. We quickly caught our 6 person grouper limit. Bob Manus caught a 53 pound 4 ounce snowy grouper. Steve Martin caught a 30 pound snowy and the rest of the limit were wreck fish. We then moved onto blueline tilefish and caught our 42 fish limit. It still was not lunchtime yet so we moved in a bit and hit a couple of sea bass spots and they were loaded up. We had our limit of sea bass in short order and came in early. This was a good thing because it took hours to clean all of those fish. Bernie Sparrer caught our largest sea bass at 5 pounds 14 ounces. We also caught a number of bluefish. We caught very few dogfish though Bob did manage to catch one which had a tag in it.

April 20, a group of anglers went out on the Rudee Angler after grouper. Club members Wes Blow and Mike Avery each caught big snowy grouper. The boat caught a good number of grouper to 45 pounds and some large blueline tilefish.

April 19, we did some tautog fishing in the Triangle Reef Area. We brought back a limit of 12 big tautog and released a few others. We also brought back a couple of nice sea bass. Danny Forehand weighed in a 14.5 pound fish that when caught, had one of my hooks in it from a rig I had lost earlier. Matt Rinck caught one even larger. His 18 pound 5 ounce fish is currently the largest tautog weighed in so far this year.

April 19, Darren Foster did some offshore bottom fishing and loaded up the boat with jumbo sea bass. They also caught 5 golden tilefish up to 45 pounds.

April 19, Craige Stallings fished offshore off of Virginia. They caught about 60 pounds of sea bass and 100 pounds of blueline tilefish.

April 18-19, Mike Avery spent the night offshore. They had a couple of bites that were probably swordfish but they did not catch them. In the morning, they did some deep dropping and caught a bunch of blackbelly rosefish. They also caught 3 golden tilefish to 30 pounds. Other species caught during the trip include: sea bass, bluefish, blue shark, hake, blueline tilefish, and some kind of snapper.

April 13, After weeks of windy weather, we finally got a calm window on a weekend. We had a good day on some of the inshore wrecks in the Triangle Reef area. We caught 30 nice tautog, some sea bass and a big hake. No monster tog but no little ones either. Ric Burnley caught our three biggest tog. One was almost 10 pounds and the two others were almost 9 pounds. Most of the fish were in the 17 inch range. We kept a few sea bass and Ric also caught a 10-pound hake. We were using green and blue crabs and some clam for bait. We kept a 16 tog limit and tagged the rest.

April 13, Chris Boyce fished the CBBT for tautog. They caught a limit of 20 tautog.

April 13, Darren Foster fished the CBBT area for tautog. They caught about 80 togs. They were biting at all stages of the tide.

April 11, Steve Martin fished at 36A. They caught 3 keeper flounder to 23 inches long and some throw backs.

April 10, Mike Avery fished the 36A area. They managed to catch 2 nice keeper flounder.

Contact Ken Neill with fishing news.

E-mail Ken Neill with fishing news.

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