I've had an extremely busy summer and my fishing time has been unfortunately cut short. Today my girlfriend and I took advantage of our day off and took the boat out to the Merrimack River, Newburyport Mass. We departed at 11 am to be perfectly aligned with the 11:15 am low tide. When fishing in the ocean you want to fish from low tide to high tide. You are trying to capture the fish as they enter the river from the ocean eating bait fish!
When we first got on the water we were a bit thrown off by the weather. We weren't sure if we were going to get caught in a storm. A spot in the river where the visibly is normally over a mile; we could hardly see one hundred feet!
After spending the entire afternoon searching the water for fish we were only able to catch one small schoolie (Schoolie: Small fish that stay in large groups. In this case striped bass must be 28'' long to keep, this one was not!). We also caught an old boot but we weren't that excited about that one...
Wildlife was extremely active the entire time we were out on the river. We saw more seals & sea lions today than we've seen all year. Unfortunately we believe that the sea lions were the reason we didn't see many fish. The sea dogs are hunting the same species of fish as us and they have the upper hand in this situation! We didn't mind sharing the water with them as they always provide a show. Splashing around and eye balling the boat is always a riot to watch. Sea lions in our area are much more active than most places because they don't have many predators, especially in the river.
