Merrimack River Report #16 Septmber 11, 2005

Merrimack River Report #16 September 11, 2005

The inshore fishing has definitely moved into the late season mode. The river is full of peanut bunker and the stripers and blues have been blitzing all over the area. Lately the Salisbury side of the river has been producing schoolie stripers on the outgoing tide. Soft baits that resemble the baby bunker in size and color are working well on light spinning gear. Flies made with of white/blue/purple materials with pearl flash do the trick for fly fishing.

I haven’t been out along the beaches recently due to nasty conditions at the mouth of the river and large swells from distant storms.

Football tuna have been taken off shore. There are also reports of many different species of whales. There was one report of a shark sighting off of the Parker Wildlife Refuge beach.

Merrimack River Report #15 September 2, 2005

Merrimack River Report #15 September 2, 2005

I am a bit tardy in getting this weekly report out but wanted to be able to include fishing results from yesterday. I had a day off from chartering and invited a friend to join me for early September fishing.

Last Monday I was out and found the inshore fishing to be slow and the seas were not good for going outside along the beaches. Tuesday I guided a repeat client with his son who was about to head back to college. I found schoolie stripers chasing baby bunker near Woodbridge Island. They provided good fly rod action for a couple of hours around the high tide. The other spots were slow. We didn’t see any bluefish.

Friday turned out to be a classic early September trip. The river was full of bait. We began fishing near the AYC mooring area with little to show for it so we moved down towards the mouth thinking of going outside along the beaches. When we arrived near buoy #11 we saw a bluefish blitz underway. We nailed a few nice blues on flies and lures before the action died as the tide rose opening escape routes for the trapped bunker. We checked around the river mouth and found that there wasn’t much going on so we headed south off of the Parker River Wildlife refuge beaches. About half way down the island we saw birds working. There we found a school of large schoolie stripers chasing bait to the surface. We caught a mix of stripers and blues. We moved farther south and got into breaking pods of bluefish. We re-rigged for blues and had some great fighting action on the fly rods. My friends 8 WT got a good workout. We closed out the trip by going behind Plum Island and found a few stripers across from Castle Island. We ended the trip in the Parker River where we witnessed a terrific bluefish blitz. There was constant action for as long as we were there. The blues were big and tough fighting, especially since we were using our fly rods. It was a great fishing trip.