Anglers Annapolis' May 22 fishing report tells the same Memorial Day weekend story most of the East Coast is now reading off, but with Maryland-specific detail — early-summer rockfish on every Bay landmark, jumbo sea bass and flounder out on the mid-shore wrecks, and the first canyon mahi and yellowfin reports of the season.
Hosts Sam and Adam start the report at the beach. "You still have a lot of good surf fishing going on with the fishing all the way up from Delaware down to the south tip of Chincoteague," Adam says. "A lot of great stuff where they are looking for stripers, bluefish are starting to show up and maybe the tail end of some of the black drum." Black drum, he notes, are coming on high-low rigs baited with sand fleas, clams or other cut bait, while rockfish and the early bluefish run are eating cut bait and plugs alike from the surf.
Offshore, the mid-shore wreck-and-reef bite is the standout. "Some of your mid-shore wrecks and reefs are holding some jumbo sea bass and flounder right now," Adam says, recommending Nomad Ridgeback jigs in 60-gram through 160-gram sizes to match the depth. "I actually heard a pretty good report from a customer that we had in here using these Ridgebacks catching his limit of sea bass."
Further out, the canyon trolling season has officially opened. "Out in the canyons guys, we are hearing our first reports of mahi and yellowfin," Adam says, urging trollers to add a Nomad DTX plug to the spread.
The meat of the report is in the Bay. "This is a great time of year to get out for rockfish," Sam says. "It's not too hot, the fish are biting a lot more so than they will be in the next few months. So great time to get out whether you want to troll for them, jig for them, or bait fish, it's really the time of year for that." Spot are showing up patchily, which opens the live-line game around the Bay Bridge, lighthouses and other hard structure. "If you can't get a hold of spot, peeler crabs and soft crabs work effectively for them, too," Sam adds. "Kind of fishing them in the same areas you would with the live spot."
The open-water jigging bite has been more challenging, the hosts say, but shallow water in the early mornings and evenings has been productive on plugs, swimbaits and jig heads. "The Bay Bridge, Love Point, mouth of Patapsco, Thomas Point, Poplar Island, all those sort of popular spots have been firing off in the early mornings and your sunset hours, as well," Adam confirms.
Maryland's catfish run is starting to slip with the warmer water, and Adam suggests anglers wanting to fill the freezer should fish it before the bite slows further. White perch are not quite in full effect but climbing, especially in shallow rivers and over the hard bottom off Hacketts and Thomas Point. "They're not quite in full effect yet, but that should be coming more and more as we get into it," Sam says, recommending perch pounders, Mepps and Rooster Tails in the shallows and Chesapeake spook jigs over the hard bottom.
Freshwater gets its own segment. Largemouth and smallmouth bass are still in the post-spawn transition. "They have not quite fully transitioned to their summer zones, which are going to be a little bit deeper," Adam says. "So if you guys want to go fish for largemouth, same places we always talk about — your neighborhood ponds, upper reaches of your tidal creeks, your reservoirs up by Baltimore, your Eastern Shore mill ponds, all great places to fish for bass." His pick for the transition is a Berkley Dime 4 square-bill cranked along rocky shorelines.
For smallmouth on the Susquehanna, Monocacy and Potomac, Adam flags low and clear water despite the recent rain. "You're going to want to make a long cast," he says. "With that low and clear water, those fish can obviously see you. So make a really long cast, and I like in clear water to do a really fast retrieve." His confidence bait there is a Whopper Plopper-style topwater.
The Eastern Shore snakehead fishery is also in play. "The Chickahominy, the Transquaking, have all been really good, as well as the little Blackwater," Sam says, recommending subsurface swimbaits during cooler weather and frogs once the days warm up.
The lone soft note is the crab pots. "It's started off a little slow, to be completely honest," Adam admits. Trotliners in 8 to 12 feet of water on razor clams or chicken necks are picking up a couple of dozen in a full day rather than filling bushel baskets. The advice is to set pots off the pier or run a trotline early, but to keep expectations modest until the Bay warms up properly.