Regulars (Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle)

Article - Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 7/29/10

Save the Sooks

Female blue crabs need our protection

It’s beginning to look like business as usual with the Chesapeake’s most treasured natural resource, the blue crab. Maryland is on course to resume the destructive harvest of female crabs, sooks, with its first official act upon the arrival of news that the crab population has at last begun to rebound. At the brink of species collapse two years ago, our crab population has shown a 60 percent increase in only two seasons after the first significant reduction of female harvest....

Article - Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 7/29/10

Save the Sooks

Female blue crabs need our protection

Article - Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 7/22/10

Ever Caught a Black Perch?

A gathering of these thick-bodied fish will fill your cooler and make a memorable dinner

My memory of big white perch begins on the Eastern Shore. I was fishing out of Crisfield in the early 1970s with the first fly-fishing guide on the Chesapeake, Doug Carson. I had looped out a long cast with a small, white marabou streamer to a sunken rock jetty off Janes Island and had come tight with what I assumed was a rowdy schoolie rock. As I fought it near the boat, Doug reached over, grabbed my leader and flipped the chunky devil into the skiff remarking, “Nice black...

Article - Dennis Doyle; , Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 7/15/10

Never, Ever, Leave Fish to Find Fish

Forgetting that maxim, this dummy went home hungry

Fish are Biting Rockfish are getting even more finicky in the heat and have developed an almost exclusive preference for spot. Unfortunately, those spot have become elusive especially in the sizes best for live-lining, five to six inches. If you can find them, you’ll get your stripers. Croaker are roaming about in good numbers and ever-increasing sizes and taking shrimp and bloodworms. Perch have now begun to swarm the shallows, and big ones can be found there...

Article - Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 7/15/10

Never, Ever, Leave Fish to Find Fish

Forgetting that maxim, this dummy went home hungry

It had been a simple plan: Start out before dawn; catch some small Norfolk spot for live-lining; locate a pod of rockfish; catch two keepers; get off the water before the temps hit 100. I’d done it before, and that formula had been a sure route to success. However, all the parts had to cooperate to make my plan work. The before-dawn part was easily accomplished, though the gods know I don’t care for getting up in the dark. But after I had launched and began my bait search, I...

Article - Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 7/8/10

Making the Grade

Rod maker George Pavlik had agonized over this rod —
the perfect stick for casting to white perch

My skiff had drifted a good distance from the cove’s rip-rapped edge by the time I glimpsed the slight flash. It was the gold/green hue of a big white perch, deep and near the rocks. Arcing my spinner bait out over the growing distance, I got it close to the mark. - I gave the lure just a second or two to get down, then started to crank. The fish must have hit it on the drop, because I was immediately solid. It felt like a good one. Playing it gently, I kept a good bend in...

Article - Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 6/24/10

Riding the Roller Coaster

Highs and lows on the trotline

The initial run on our trotline proved a surprising success. The first four baits had jumbo crabs hanging on them, and my netter, Harrison, quickly had them rattling in our collection basket. After that fortunate start, they continued to come, and there was scarcely need to measure any of them. All were prime Jimmies. My son and I were ecstatic. This was going to prove an easy trip. We would quickly discover that we were wrong again. Our trip had nearly been a casualty from the...

Article - Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 6/17/10

Perch in a Poke

An old salt teaches this old dog a new lesson

It felt like a good fish right from the start. Lifting my rod tip at the strike, I felt solid resistance, then a headshake. Then the perch shot out from deep under the dock where I had hooked it. On its way out, the crafty devil also cornered at the nearest barnacle-encrusted piling and cut the line. I shook my head and reached for another spinner bait. This wasn’t the first big white perch to have done me dirt that morning. A number of whities finning in our five-gallon...

Article - Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 6/10/10

Pinched

Sometimes the crab catches you

The sudden pain was excruciating. The Jimmie I was attempting to free from my net was not particularly large, but it had closed its pincer firmly across the tip of my middle finger and was bearing down with unbelievable pressure. Just a moment’s inattention, and I’d been caught like the rankest amateur crabber. It hurt like hell. I yelled out in agony. My right hand held the crab net that had captured the rascal, and I couldn’t let it go without adding even more...

Article - Sporting Life by Dennis Doyle; by Dennis Doyle - 6/3/10

Let Summer Begin

I’ve caught and eaten my first feast of crabs

It started out as a tip from a friend. Fooling with his crab line in a distant, shallow cove, he had discovered a bumper load of crabs weeks earlier than he had ever encountered anywhere else on the Chesapeake. I wanted in on that. Experience with chasing the delectable Chesapeake blue crab had convinced me that catching enough for a good feast was probably not going to happen until mid-June. Before then, it always seemed that our state’s hallowed crustaceans had risen from their...