Saturday was a fun trip with long time customer Paul and his wife and young children. Everyone had a blast catching bait, mackerel and pollock, and then we spent some time catching stripers. Just a lot of family fun. This week we also caught a sea bass, our first for the season. Every year I get a few, they make for good eating even though much smaller than striped bass. Sea Bass are more common south of us where sometimes party boats will run trips for them. In NH they are rare and there aren't any size limits on them, although anything less than 14" is just too small to keep in my opinion.

Tight lines,
Capt. Joel
www.nhsaltwaterfishing.com

Striped Bass fishing is still a bit off (past years catches) over the last two weeks. We are catching fish, usually between 5 to 15 or so but I am just not seeing the large schools of smaller stripers that were evident in prior years. On almost every trip we caught at least 1 fish over 28” and on many we caught 3 or 4. Last week I did a lot of live bait fishing, first going out and catching mackerel and then live lining them back for striped bass. It can be a real effective and fun way to fish although best with one or two anglers aboard. This week right, off the macks seemed to disappear. So we went back to cut bait for stripers. That gave us more time to fish for our targeted species and in most cases we caught similar sized fish. The silver sides (small bait fish) that had been in the river system where still around but not as prevalent on the surface, they seemed to be deeper in the water column. Saturday probably the busiest day on the river this week, produced some of the best results. With 3 long time customers we managed 3 bigger fish, with one for the grill and a bunch of other good sized fish. A number of fishing spots produced which is probably the best news of all.

Tight Lines, Capt. Joel
www.nhsaltwaterfishing.com

We are catching stripers on each trip with on average 2 or 3 undersized fish for each over 28” fish. Last year it was more like 15 undersized for each keeper. On each trip this week we caught at least one keeper and on the last trip of the week on Saturday caught 4 keepers with the biggest a whopping 40” fish. Just an amazing fish, what a great time we had with 2 sons who treated their Dad to a fishing trip. The day before I took two old high school chums out for a trip, where we mixed bait fishing with a little fly fishing. What a story Bill will have to tell. He hooked a good striper on fly that took him into his backing and then his backing knot busted. We watched a 100 ft of fly line moving through the water and decided to go after it. We finally got the end of the fly line and hand lined in the fish until it got caught up in the weeds and broke the tippet. Well at least Bill got his $70 fly line back and had a story to tell. I don’t usually do fly fishing trips but having taken Bill before I knew with flexibility we could make it work.

Early in the week, I took long time customer Mark out for a live bait trip. This requires us to go catch live bait (which can take an hour or two) and then bring them back into the river to fish. This is a great trip for one or two guys on a 6 or 8 hour trip. Final tally we had more than 6 keepers (although we released them all) with a couple more big fish that we broke off in the structure..
Tess caught a large striper midweek on her first ever saltwater fishing trip, putting the boys to shame.

What a strange year this has been for Striper fishing in the Piscataqua River. Unlike past years I am just not seeing a lot of smaller fish in the river. On occasion yes, there are some surface feeds and we do catch a few smaller fish but not large numbers like in years past. Silversides, (little baits) are everywhere sometimes so thick the depth finder screen is blacked out (or purpled out on my colored screen). That causes me some worry as the smaller fish are the future big fish. Hopefully this is just a temporary situation, and soon we will see a big migration of stripers into the river.

We didn’t catch a lot of stripers on each trip this week but we always caught em, and everyone had a great time, which is really the most important thing in any fishing trip.

Tight lines, Capt. Joel
Reel Ecstasy, LLC