I am afraid to post this but this summer has been one of the easiest summers I have had since moving to the bay in 1997. I am completely due for a bad trip. We have limited out every trip since the start of the regular season except one trip, whether it has been jigging, chunking, or live lining...
July kept the gravy train rolling. I started the month chunking and slowly moved to live lining as the spot started showing up. I had been making the run all the way to eastern bay for my spot to start with. However there are spot showing up close to home now. For a couple of weeks it was worth the 30 min run at 22-25 knots to fill the live well with perfect-sized spot in less than hour. Now I am finding spot close to home but they are a bit larger than I was getting in eastern bay. If you are looking for a good spot bite, think deeper water than normal. I am getting them in 22-28' of water, whereas I normally am getting them in much shallower water this time of year. As soon as I get shallower than 20' of water, it seems to be almost all perch.
Live lining has been anywhere from 5' of water out to 35' of water. We have fished both north and south of the bridge with most trips running south now to avoid all the crowds. (it was great for a few weeks watching all the Chesapeake Beach/Deale/South & West River boats going right by us North of the bridge). Occasionally birds have shown us the way to the bite. Other times we are fishing ledges or structure.
When live lining I have also been mixing in 7/0 in-line circle hooks to extend fishing with some catch and release on lip-hooked, unharmed fish. Once we get a limit we are done though and we make sure that just because the circle hook lip hooked that the spot didnt get into the guts and pull up organs. We have been trying to engage the reels almost immediately after a solid pick up. Yes we miss more fish but the circle hooks have been surprisingly effective.
Here are few photos of the last month. (not all trips)
Chunking:
Jigging:
Live lining:
