Fly Fished the Upper & Middle Chesapeake Bay - Well Worth the Run

Our trip started out as planned. I picked up Craig Balzarin and Sheila Blakeman from Montrose, CO at the Inner Harbor at 6am. They wanted to fly fish for striped bass and bluefish.  Our first stop was Ft. McHenry and when using 9w fly rods with floating line, they had 4 blow-ups on a Blados Crease Fly in olive/pearl or a Mylar Popper in blue/white. The sun came up so we moved to another location close by where 3 blow-ups before the sun put the fish down.

This Striper was Caught on Topwater

We then moved out on the Chesapeake Bay and headed south. No fish showed up on the sonar units when checking the knolls; 6 Foot, 7 Foot, and 9 Foot so we kept moving south, looking for working birds or fish on structure. This didn't happen until we were well south of the Bay Bridges.

The catching started on 6 weight fly rods with 250 grain sinking line and 3" Sinking Clousers with the most productive color being chartreuse back/yellow body #4 hook.  This kept up until lunch time when the current went slack.  

Sheila and Craig Enjoying a Day on the Chesapeake Bay

On the way back up the Bay the sonar units lit up at locations on and around the knolls.  They were catching mixture of stripers, bluefish, and white perch for approximately 2 hours before heading home.

On the way we stopped at the buoy where Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner so Craig and Sheila could touch this historical buoy, something that will stay with them forever.  What a great day, catching a mixture of countless fish on fly rods and seeing over 75 miles of our Chesapeake Bay.

Don't put your fly of light tackle equipment away quite yet. If fishing is anything like last year there should be some large striped bass staging at the mouths of the Rivers in the Middle Chesapeake Bay from late September to the mid November.