"Where are the rockfish?"
If I had a dollar for every time someone has asked me that in the last 10 days, I'd have $2.
Just joking.
The question has come up at fisheries meetings in Annapolis and at the Wish-A-Fish event for special needs kids at Sandy Point State Park. It was raised by two gentlemen from the Maryland Saltwater Sportfishermen's Association while I was buying my hunting license.
Even the state's most sought-after rockfish — that $20,000 rascal, Diamond Jim — has made himself scarce with one month to go in the Maryland Fishing Challenge. The $500 impostor fish have been MIA, too, this year.
Where are the rockfish? I can tell you they're not living in my freezer or taking up space on my grill.
Maddeningly, you see schools of bait fish and occasional breaking fish, but not the usual frenzy of working birds and the boats that chase them.
According to the "Eyes on the Bay" website run by the Department of Natural Resources, the water clarity at the Bay Bridge is well below the mean for July and salinity levels are noticeably elevated. At the Fort Smallwood monitoring station, salinity has been on a rocket ride since mid-June, while dissolved oxygen levels have rebounded since a late June swoon to critical levels.
Blame the lack of rain for some of our misery.
Of course, not everyone has had bad luck. Take Warren Magruder, for example.
He was out last Tuesday morning trolling off Gibson Island at Belvidere Shoal, just about to call it a day, when he got a strike. It didn't act like a rockfish, so Magruder surmised it was a ray.
Instead of cutting his line and losing his bucktail — as many of us would have done — Magruder decided he would stand and fight, a natural decision for a retired Army major general. He doubled down on his Astex two-speed reel and cranked on.
The tug-of-war raged on for more than 20 minutes as the sun got higher in the sky and the heat rose in waves from the shimmering water. The wiry fisherman thought two or three times about breaking off the fight and heading for the shade of home, but he didn't.
Did I mention Magruder is 82?
Anyway, the fish's head finally broke the surface and Magruder could see it was a black drum the size of a fourth-grader. When he finally brought the fish alongside, he realized he faced a logistical nightmare: How to get Moby Drum into the boat.
Did I mention Magruder was fishing alone on his 23-foot boat?
"I dipped my net down under him and got on my knees and finally rolled him in," he explained.
The fish was 50-inches long, 36-inches around and weighed about 70 pounds.
Back on shore at his Bodkin Creek home, the retired general retired for the day. "I'm exhausted," he told me on the phone.
Neighbor Jack Streb spread the word while others took photos and helped clean the fish--a garden hoe was enlisted to assist with the scaling operation of a species nicknamed, "big ugly" for a reason.
For Magruder, a fisherman since the 1930s, this was the first black drum he'd caught above the Bay Bridge.
The state record for black drum in the Chesapeake Bay is 103 pounds, 8 ounces. It was caught in 1973 at Buoy 16 in the Choptank River. In 1955, Maryland held the world record when James Aaron caught a 92-pound black drum at the old U.S. 50 bridge in Cambridge. (The world record is 113 pounds, 1 ounce, set in 1975 in Delaware.)
Bill Goldsborough, an angler and scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, called the location of the catch, "a very rare occurrence" and praised Magruder.
"More power to him. I hope I have that kind of energy when I'm 82," he said.
Marty Gary, a state fisheries biologist, said black drum can be found in Eastern Bay at the southern end of Kent Island.
"I'd say that fish was pretty much at the northern edge of its range," Gary said. "It's kind of a drought year and salinity is up. If you were going to catch one far north, this would be the year.
"It's an awesome story, an old man and the sea tale," said Gary. "It's really impressive."
On ramp
A tip of the battered ball cap to the state employees at Dundee Creek Marina, who acted quickly to requests to open the boat ramps early so that crabbers and anglers could beat the heat of the day.
Andrew Hangen, assistant manager at Gunpowder Falls State Park, said they worked out the staffing and security details so that the gates could open at 5 a.m.
The ramps are at the end off Route 150 at the end of Grace's Quarter Road. The user fee is $10.
Make mine jelly
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a new online gizmo to help forecast where the jellyfish are. It uses temperature and salinity readings plus on the water observations by scientists and volunteers to chart the movement of the stinging beasties of the Chesapeake Bay.
The map is still in the tinkering stages, but give it a whirl: chesapeakebay.noaa.gov/forecasting-sea-nettles/
Candy.thomson@baltsun.com