2001 Striper Season

So far its been a strange year for weather. Early season warmth and a dry spring combine to make an overall crappy start to the striper season. So far the river is 60 degrees and the ocean coastal temp. is 47, so no stripers yet, but they aren't far off. I'm seeing reports from the www.ccamaine.org website that say fish are starting to show up in rivers just south of the Kennebec, so we are a week away, at least. We would have some resident fish in Winslow if we had rain this spring to provide high enough water, but NO WE CAN'T HAVE THAT, CAN WE! so we wait for the migratory to show, and we wait ,and we wait!  

Alewives are here, and have been for two weeks. The state is hard at work pumping them over the Sabasticook dam and trucking them to other bodies of water. 5/15/2001

May  23, 2001: Stripers just started showing up in Waterville/ Winslow today, and they appear to be the migratory fish. Some good sized fish have been caught and this leads me to believe they are not Kennebec resident stripers.

May 26, 2001: fished Augusta today and had a good day of fishing. We caught probably twenty fish in all and four of them were nice ones, in the 30" class. We caught them on poppers, sluggos and jigs from above the old dam location to well below the Augusta bridges.  It felt good to tie into some nice ones but it's been a long wait with no early schoolie activity like we are use to seeing.  going to hit it tomorrow as well to check if new fish come in with the new tide. I have a 7:00am tide so it should be a good one.

May 27, 2001: Not a lot of new fish this day but did catch some good ones. It seems like it should be a decent year but nothing to write home about. 

June 1, 2001: We've been catching decent fish from Waterville to Sidney and also Augusta. Not great numbers of fish but they are nice healthy good sized fish ranging from 24-36 inches. Water temp. is mid 60s.

June 5, 2001: fishing still nothing to brag about, if you have some knowledge of where striper can be found at different points in the tide you'll catch some fish. If your just starting out, your going to struggle some. Like any river fish as the tide drops fish are seeking deeper water so they won't get trapped in pools. Work the edges of the tidal flats and gravel bars on the out going tides. Lately it's been pretty remarkable how shallow these fish are being caught. If you find a gravel bar with adjacent deeper water MARK THAT SPOT, and check at all points of tide to find when fish show up. You may be surprised where they are at low tide. When fishing shallow, smaller more quiet baits seem to do well versus large rattling poppers and the like. STEALTH IS KEY!

June 15, 2001: Good fishing in Augusta lately, same techniques described in the June 5 report. Lots of folks running around with gas motors shallow. I wish people that like striper fishing would invest in either an anchor or a large enough electric motor so they could stay quiet. They could quadruple they're success rate, without question.

June 16, 2001: Alewives are getting thin and will be gone soon.

June 23, 2001:  We had a decent day in Augusta this day, still catching fish real shallow. What a blast to watch them work the shallow water, and even more of a blast to catch them in it. water temp. 71 degrees.

June, 24, 2001: Fish seem to be reacting to fishing pressure this evening, nearly no action until low light, and good action after dark, 30" fish came out to play and were hungry.

June 29, 2001: decent fishing this evening, fish came in early in the tide and under low light conditions. I think fishing pressure is getting to them as they haven't been real active once the sun gets up high. Fish are there but not feeding until conditions allow them low light and "quiet". Almost no bait could be seen around Augusta but fish were still there (inactive until almost dark) , this could be a result of the tide timing but it acts more like fishing pressure stifling to me. Next week affords us early morning high tide to test my theory. Some cool nights to help cool the water would help, water temp. 74 degrees this night and at this rate we'll see 80 before long, that will put the kybosh to the striper fishing for sure. ... here's to some cool nights and some weekday rains! Come on Mother Nature, help us out a little here!

Tight lines all!!

July 3, 2001: It's still good fishing in Augusta, morning tides are better than the evening tides,  if we can get high tides in low light, all the better. It looks like some cool nights and some rain are on their way to help cool the water and hopefully raise the water level a bit too. I fished the evening tide this day and we did fairly well in the last hour of light and after dark using poppers and rubber baits shallow. I didn't see a lot of bait this trip but there was some there and fairly good sized, I believe it was herring but I'm not positive. Water temp. 71

July 4, 2001: I fished Waterville/Winslow this morning and struggled long enough to realize I should have stayed home and slept in. No bait no fish in the morning anyhow. I've been hearing tails of fish popping up in certain spot during the day when bait comes in but spotty and hard to predict when. All one can do is hit the early morning action and a good tide will bring in some more "new" fish. Things can change in a heart beat from one tide to the next, so you never know. Water temp. is still in a tolerable range 72 so there is no reason other than lack of bait for the lack of action this particular day.

July 7 2001: I took the drift trip from Waterville to Sidney today. We found some nice fishing spots along the way, some even held fish (smile). We had a head wind the whole way but still had a beautiful float and I'm glad I took the trip.  We also found some holes as deep as 16 feet, but I'm not saying where. There are quite a few spots to hold fish all the way down to Sidney. 

July 14, 2001: I been hearing that the morning tides have been producing some decent fish. We have midday highs this week. I'll be trying some night fishing this week. We did OK this day, but nothing to write home about.

July 16. 2001: fished after dark this night and did fine once we found clear water. Augusta had a freak shower and the water was all murky especially on the opposite side from the landing. It looked like mud coming out of Bond brook. Water temp. was 73 and the fish were surprisingly strong at that temperature. We used a fall pattern technique dead drifting jigs on the bottom.