August 20 Fishing Update, Ocean City Fly Fishing, Gunpowder Trout Fishing

Heres the skinny from the coast. We’ve been fishing our usual haunts in the bays and inshore waters around Ocean City this month. Fishing has been pretty typical of summer fishing in Maryland's coastal waters. Fish species like summer flounder and hardheads are in the bays in good numbers, stripers are a regular catch near the bridges and jetties and in the inlets. Snapper bluefish can be seen chasing bait on strong tides and we’ve even seen a few sea trout in the mix the last few weeks.

Fly fisherman have a good shot at all of these fish species when fishing the coastal bays. Clean water and good tides help your chances of course, and when you pair these with the low light and traffic around dusk and dawn your chances at catching fish are pretty good.

Most of the stripers we have caught in recent weeks have been in the 20 to 26 inch range. We have been fishing our staple deep sinking lines with a variety of flies. We have seen some decent flounder, like the 19 incher below that fell for a clouser minnow fished in 9 feet of water.

We look forward to fall as we start catching some of the stripers migrating south from their summer home on the New England Coast. We had great striper fishing last fall with the best of the fishing being in November and early December.

Gunpowder River Summer Trout Fishing

When not fishing the coastal bays I spend much of my summer guiding trips for trout on the Gunpowder River. The Gunpowder has gotten some great press recently, listed as one of the top tailwater trout streams in the nation in several fly fishing periodicals. Though a little bias, I couldn’t agree more. Very few other streams in the mid-Atlantic area offer the unique fishing for streambred trout that the Gunpowder offers.

Summer on the Gunpowder makes for some great fishing. We have great caddis hatches inthe mornings along many stretches of the stream, and fish are eager to take a well presented dry. This past week on several trips we have landed many good fish on various caddis patterns fished in the riffles. Tiny Trico mayflies have also become a summer staple on the river, and fisherman will often find trout sipping them from the surface in the long glassy glides along the stream.

If you fall short fishing caddis and tricos, give some big buggy terrestrials a try. A foam beetle or hopper fished near the bank is often a sure bet . Don’t be afraid to cast into some of the ”deep rough” as I call it an tuck your fly right up against a fallen tree or logpile. You can bet there is a trout nearby on the Gunpowder.