Welcome to the 2009 Northeast saltwater fishing reports, better late then never as some say. Capt. John McMurray will not doing the fishing reports on the Lateral Line Blog this year. Between his time commitment needed for his duties at his recent appointment to the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Counsel and the recent addition of twins to he and his wife’s responsibilities, things are a little crazy around his house. Capt. John will still be providing us with weekly reports from his home waters in and around Jamaica Bay, NY, but you have me as your host. I will be publishing this report weekly until the end of November and we will begin again in the spring of 2010.  I cannot promise to rant as much as Capt. John, but I will try to preface the reports each week with some sort of fisheries news, information, and comments from the Northeast. If you have something you think I should cover, please shoot me an email. The Governor of Maryland recently appointed me to the Maryland Sport Fish Advisory Commission and as part of our monthly meeting we are briefed not only on Maryland sport fish advisory things, but also what is going on coast wide.  I will try to bring anything I find as interesting to this report. (image courtesy of Capt. Phil Cronin from Capawock Charters out of Martha’s Vineyard, see below for his full report. You can click on most all the pictures and if there is a bigger version they will pop up in a new window)

If you are a fishing captain or guide from the northeast and would like your report included please drop me an email and I will let you know the details so we can get you included. I also want to thank all our saltwater fishing guides who have returned from last year and will be providing reports. Please remember that all the guides that supply fishing reports for this report on a consistent basis have their links listed on the right hand side alphabetically under their home waters state; please visit their sites and support their businesses when you can.

One last thing, you will find that these reports mainly concentrate on saltwater light tackle and fly fishing for striped bass, bluefish, and false albacore. This is probably more then anything because that is what Capt John does as well as myself. Where and when possible I will do my best to cover other methods and other species such as fluke and offshore for yellow and blue fin tuna. I think you will find that the light tackle and fly guides will give you a good pulse on that is going on.

Now that we have all that out of the way, let’s roll.

Northeast Saltwater Fisheries News
The buzz in the northeast fishing world this week seems to be coming from Massachusetts where a bill has recently been drafted to make Striped Bass a game fish. Stripers Forever is heading up this initiative and this week has been asking for support from all anglers to write the Massachusetts legislators expressing that you support this bill. If you fish these waters Continue Reading »