Posted on February 21st, 2017
It was another absolutely beautiful February day here on the shore today with light winds, mostly sunny skies and temperatures in the 50s. I had been looking forward to today’s fishing trip since this weekend when the weather broke and I started getting reports of rockfish in the bay and white perch, yellow perch and crappie in the local rivers and creeks. I had the pleasure of fishing the Pocomoke River with Captain Brian Behe on board Buffalo Hunter Guide Service for an upcoming episode of Hooked on OC and I had an absolutely awesome time. Dave Messick and I met Captain Brian at Byrd Park in Snow Hill this morning and were on the Pocomoke in just a few minutes. The weather couldn’t have been any better for mid February. We started just down river from the park where we slow trolled to find the fish and Captain Brian had a nice chain pickerel in just about two minutes. After a couple of small crappie and a couple of different scouting spots we ended up at a spot we had success in during another trip with Captain Brian where we ended up having the best luck. We were using a combination of small crappie jigs and live minnows on bobbers. This is easy fishing for kids and novices and fun fishing for even the most experienced angler. Up until the last hour Captain Brian was absolutely smoking me, outfishing me badly like 8 to 2, but then it turned on really good and I was able to save face and catch a couple of nice crappie and a really nice chain pickerel. Overall we caught over a dozen crappie, one large mouth bass and two chain pickerel. Captain Brian dropped us off so we could pick the kids up from school and then he went back out for about an hour where he caught four more nice large mouth on a spinner bait. Not only was the fishing and company good, we saw all sorts of awesome nature on this beautiful river. We saw bald eagles, the “goat island” goat, too many birds to count and even a whitetail deer swimming across the river. Dave Messick got some awesome still shots of the action including some cool underwater stuff while we filmed another episode of Hooked on OC. It was an awesome day on the Pocomoke River!
There are definitely some small rockfish moving around in the bay and tributaries behind Ocean City. Finn McCabe submitted this photo of a nice 20″ fish that he caught on Ayres creek over the weekend.
My good friend John Wooldridge who is a regular contributor to the Daily Angle is on a really cool trip out west to the Gallatin river in Montana. John was fishing with his cousin Jeff Radick and his buddy Matt and they released 49 rainbow trout, brown trout and white fish.
