Kennebec River Striper Report June 12th 2015
The middle of June typically offers some pretty hot Striped bass action on Maine's Kennebec river system and this year is no exception. Yesterday Nathan Gould,from Bath, met me at the dock for a late morning run down the river to catch a ripping outbound tide. The first stop didn't give us much but it's sure to light up with the next big push of migratory fish that make the sharp left hand turn into the Kennebec...the water column is top to bottom with bait!!! Next stop was show time but nothing compared to what we would run into later in the tide!!! The second stop featured large sand flat that drains off into a deeper channel with heavy current, this spot provided us with an hour or so of heavily feeding schoolie stripers...jigs and top water plugs got blasted on nearly every cast. The surprising part was that at this point it's noontime under a bright sun and the fish are still very active!!! Moving on, I ran the boat several miles upriver into one of the many tributaries of the Kennebec...what we found here was something straight out of national geographic... Diving gulls, osprey & eagles...and bank to bank blitzing stripers. We stuck it out in this little drainage for the better part of two hours...everything we threw at them was to their liking. Flies, jigs, plugs all got slammed over and over again. 3" clouser half & half's drew immediate strikes with the fly rod. crippled herring spoons worked quickly through the current was money as well...so far we are off to a great start here in the southern & midcoast Maine regions. The tributaries and mudflats around casco bay are showing good numbers of fish and everyone from fly anglers to plug casters to tube & worm trollers are enjoying the season. Also worth noting is the arrival of Striped Bass in some of the estuaries of Penobscot bay, an area that has been relatively barren of stripers for the last several seasons. Hopefully these watersheds continue to fill in with stripers for the next 6 weeks!!
Stay Salty My Friends, Capt. George