Portsmouth, New Hampshire

Portsmouth

Striper fishing is still strong in the Piscataqua River. On Tuesday, June 25th I headed out for a trip with Wayne, his dad Bobby, brother David and friend Craig. We decided to chunk and were rewarded with over 40 fish with many in the 25-27 inch range and 5 in the 30” inch range. Circle hooks were used and once again proved their value as with all of these fish only one was deep hooked and might not survive. Had we used conventional hooks I am sure there would have been a much greater mortality rate. Circle hooks really do seem to be catching on as Craig had just gotten back from a trip to Alaska and said they used circle hooks there as well for salmon and halibut. Live bait continues to be plentiful at the mouth of the river, with a mixed bag of mackerel and Pollack available. On Sunday, June 23, headed out in search of some fly-fishing activity, I found surface-feeding fish around the shipyard but the school stayed close to the facility and the patrol boat wouldn’t let us get close enough to the school to cast a fly within range. I did catch a number of larger schoolies on buck tail jigs. Continuing our pursuit for fly-fishing action headed to Little Bay and worked a school of surface feeding stripers for over 2 hours. We were near high tide and the fish stayed up busting baits the whole time we were there. Luckily we were the only boat working the school and made drifting runs through them with the motor off. Caught many fish using Deceivers and sinking line.

Troy

troycreasy

Comments

0 likes Log in to like

Please log in to leave a comment.