We are so fortunate to live in Maine. August is really a great time to enjoy the beautiful weather and we’ve had quite a spell of top quality days. With weather this nice and Labor Day fast approaching, we’ve all been enjoying the last few days of summer.

During August, fishermen put in a lot of hours and it’s typical for action to be slow. However, we are hearing many positive accounts of big fish being around and some nice catches.

At Hermit Island Campground, their is confirmation of a camper landing a 45 inch striper using chunked herring. As the story goes, he literally dragged the fish all over the campground showing it off. Around that same time boat fishermen fishing off Small Point were consistently boating stripers into the 30 inch range trolling tube rigs around the sandy bottom bays.

Action off the beaches has been slow, unless fishing the low light hours which includes throughout the night. Bait fishermen have recorded many nice 30 inch plus stripers. Worms and green crabs fished on bottom are working well.

Top water action’s been a bit slow. Usually this time of year the fish are staying tight to bottom and anglers see little surface activity. However, in the last week surface action is starting to pick up. Near the mouth of the New Meadows River, balls of bait were visible drifting along the shoreline and the bait seemed nervous.

It seems early for this bait, but when it arrives, the stripers get worked. With bait and shorter daylight hours, the stripers are starting to bunch up. In the last week, I’ve personally seen schools of stripers working bait on the surface in both the Kennebec and the Sheepscot Rivers. This is a great sign!

Some of our professional guides are telling us they have been seeing ”baby bunker” getting slammed by stripers. This bait apparently was pushed on shore by strong onshore winds last weekend. The striper are keying in on this bait and their are some really nice fish in the mix too. Watch what happens… It usually takes the striper a week or so to bunch up and get organized, but as a group they will chase the bait into the tidal bays and onto the flats. The bait will get cornered and then the chaos ensues. This is what it’s all about!