Maine Striper Fishing Reports

9-20-11
We got this nice fish off a draining Mud flat in Casco Bay this morning on a windy flat the fish was sitting in about 2 ft of water:) there are lots of fish around and they seem to be getting snappier by the day!!!! The big bass on the outer island sand are still doing there thing lots of sand sand eels as-well spike macs and 8-10 inch pollack around who are all on the striper menu at this point, inner islands and mud flats have just food drifting everywhere from small dropouts to peanuts and even a few big schools of pogies left around that did not get netted up yet,,,One thing that is very different from this time the past few years is there are fish still really spread out allowing us to contuine to fish the flats the why we like by ourselves,With these warmer humid nights the water temps has been really stable should contuine to see some pretty darn good fishing for three more weeks maybe longer? Bottom line get on the water as much as you can right now if you hit it when they are snappy you are in for some outstanding fishing.......

Maine Striper Fishing Mid Sept 2011

Capt Justin Rea

The first cloudy night during this big bright moon offered a little better fishing here on the flats of Casco Bay also having one of the top FL keys guides on the bow doesn't  hurt one bit. Capt Justin Rea who just came away with two of the biggest wins a fly guide can the RedBone S-Fly and the Del Brown, we found some feeding fishing in some skinny water in fog and it held up until we where kicked off the water due to a lighting storm that came pushing thru, and that was a good thing I don't know what was foggier the weather or us from a little over done evening..Today was a blow out and a time to catch up..Looking forward not sure what this cold front will do to the fishing but my experience is it can shut it down for a tide or two, but we do have a few degrees of water temp to work with, also plenty of bait and with the fading bright moon we should see some good fishing again real soon, if not by Sunday we will start to see those night lows coming back up next week and should help.I will say this at about 1.5 on the tide change yesterday we had a ton of  fish around us so they are total schooled up now is some areas and feeding as a group ton of fun to see and it helped us get our heads out of the fog..    

Maine Striper Fishing Reports

The feeling of fall hit me on my bald head this AM running out, wishing I had a knit beanie on instead of a baseball cap, but like yesterday the cool morning made for some pretty hot fishing between the last two trips we have boated nearly 30 fish, these are all coming on a incoming tides in some pretty skinny water, the fish are feeding and staying near the small dropouts and the peanut bunker that is spread out into a few pockets in Casco Bay for about 2 week now!!! mixed in are some nice size blue fish and a good but wish was it was better population of smaller striped bass, good to see!!!! I also wonder if the influx small stripers are native Kennebec fish pushed out due to poor water quality from last weeks storm and inland rains??? In both cases over the past two-days our window has been kinda short but very active and very willing fish if you don't put them down, Fly wise we have been able the last few days to get away without really matching the size of the bait or profile for that matter and just a hollow pattern in the 4-6 inch range has worked very well,with the set up of tides and bright moon the next few nights they might  become a little more picky and more dialed into shape and profile?although I don't offer Bait fishing trips, but the 8 year old kid next door boated a 39 and 44 on live bait today with a little inside info on a outer island beach that is holding a very large amount of big fish right now!!! It was fun to see him run over with his photos and how excited he was to tell me he released them both!!!! a few high fives and a promise to teach him to fly cast this fall we have the next generation angler on our hands!!
 
On the fly our best this week was 36 inch fat and spitting up peanut bunker boat side, lots of 20-30 inch fish and a few fish near 16, 

I truly feel our best fishing of the year is still ahead of us and water temps and bait are all on our side, the only real slow period we have had came with very bouncy winds changing direction and flow daily, combined with the normal lull as fish start to school up and are more worried about being social than feeding I think we are both going into a bit more stable weather pattern and the fish are already showing sighs of feeding as a group... and as always you can not catch them unless your on the water, enjoy the search.....