July 7, 2012
It was one of the hottest days of the year and I had just
finished a full days’ worth of field work delineating wetlands inside the Beltway. I had consumed over a gallon of water and was
about wiped out by the time we made it back to the office. But Route 50 wasn’t that bad and my kayak was
still on the roof from our trip to Kent Island visiting Pete for his
birthday. I never got a chance to use
it. Part of me wanted to get into a few
fish since my wife and kids were at the beach.
By now it was peak rush-hour on route 50 catching the workers going home
and mad weekend traffic making a mad dash across the bridge for some fun in the
sun. What the heck…. 20 minutes wait at
the bridge but I’m across. Head to Ace
Hardware to build a tackle /rod storage device out of milk crate. It comfortably
and confidently held 4 rods. I dropped
the kayak in at Hemmingway’s (no idea if that was legal) to hit the eastern
shore pilings. Why the eastern when the
western side is so close and easy?
Because it just fishes better.
You have the sewer pipe there enclosed in tons of rip rap and the
eastern side pilings just before the channel tend to almost always hold
fish. Sometimes, even now, past peak
migration, they can be trophy size with the magic wand in the proper hands.
Usually jigging ¾ oz head behind the pilings just before the
drop off does the trick when rigged with long skinny plastics to cut down on
drag and then popped violently off the bottom quickly enough not to get snagged
and aggressively enough to entice a strike.
The strikes almost always come on the drop of the violent jig or whip of
the rod. Braided line is a must, as is a
good heavy leader.
I picked away at some fish with the sun still high in the sky
but there were all dinks. Around sunset
the tide was waning and I thought my chances were useless. I picked a bad day to hit the bridge with the
tide at its weakest at the magic hour of the day. But, with a little luck I drifted over a
school. First I hit the pipe in the
deeper section with a few other boats from 16’ bass boats to 26 foot offshore
center consoles. The water was like
glass out there tonight.
There weren’t any fish taking top water or the jig for
whatever reason. Then I moved shallow
once the sun had completely set and figured I’d work the pipe towards shore on
my way home. Well, there was one good
hump with some decent disturbance and sure enough the fish were there. First was the jig to get hit by a respectable
22 inch fish. Then a bunch more
dinks. Then they were all over the surface
but wouldn’t touch the spook for whatever reason. They wanted that jig and they wanted it near
the bottom. Multiple hits per casts,
many hook ups, many many fish to the kayak in that magic 30 minutes of ambient
light when the blistering sun had finally set.
It’s almost as if the fish were waited for that magic hour. The tide couldn’t have been any slower but
that sun was just relentless all day long.
Once she was gone… look out. It’s
smart to only fish that first and last hour of light this time of year. You’ll probably triple the number of fish in
an hour’s fishing during that magic hour than you would all day otherwise.
Get out there… easy close to home fishing.
