North Coast Angler
Fishing Reports
August 7, 2009
Merrimack River Report
Finally a better report! The fishing has improved somewhat from the past few weeks. On Monday and Thursday we fished the mouth with reasonable success with a mixed bag of 20-28 inch stripers and a few blues pushing 10+. All of our catch fell for the bone Jumpin Minnow, a great way to enjoy this size striper on light tackle spinning gear. We also observed several boats hitting stripers in the 35 inch range while drifting with live macks on the incoming tide along the north jetty. There are still large swarms of sandeels at the mouth, especially over on the south side sandbars. Up inside on the Joppa, the water temps are running high (74+) during the day so whatever stripers come up with the tide will drop out fairly quickly after the tide turn.

John, Alex and David with a few nice stripers

Joe W. reports the night time eel angling out on the flats picked up last week as well with stripers up to 34 inches tossing and drifting eels. Joe also reported that a few other guys bagged some fish over 40 inches.

Don J. with a 34 inch eel taken striper

Cape Ann Report
The fishing for the most part has picked up over the past week. Tim P. over at the Captains House B&B reported that one of his guests bagged several keepers while chunk fishing from the rocks at Whale Cove. Other anglers who manage to find macks are getting a few more keeper sized stripers as well. We got out there near Straitsmouth late yesterday afternoon and bagged a couple of nice 24-27 inch stripers casting topwaters and trolling a tube. Steve P. hit a few stripers and blues this week at various locations in Gloucester. Winchester B&T reported several weigh-ins this week including a striper over 47 pounds. They did not know where or how the fish was taken.

Brian O’C reported slow striper fishing over at Crane with some stripers out beach side falling for topwaters. Most of the stripers are in that 25 inch class. The sandeels that were there seemed to have moved out and taken the bigger stripers with them.

Offshore Report
Capt Bart Waldo reported some awesome tuna fishing last w/e boating two 200 plus pounders out at Stellwagon. He also reported seeing good numbers of big stripers feeding out there as well, so many as to become a nuisance! Capt Bart is now booking trips, so if you want to bag a tuna, he is the guy to get out there with.
Here is a link to his site: LBJR Offshore
The Best Tuna Charters and More

200 pound tuna aboard the Hunter

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