Hard Times Beget a Top-Notch Day Of Rockfishing . . . at a Discount

It's not every day you come upon a school of big, plump, keeper-size rockfish stacked on the bottom of the Chesapeake in shallow water, feeding like locusts. "It's like perch fishing," gushed Don Schline. "We're catching 'em two at a time!"

Schline and seven middle-aged lacrosse buddies from in and around Baltimore were having a ball last week. They'd booked a charter for a mid-week fishing excursion on the Chesapeake. Fishing was hot off Poplar Island and, business being slow these days, they had the place almost to themselves.

"It's a sad commentary on our times," mused Capt. Ed Darwin, who runs his own fishing operation 15 miles north around the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. "I don't think I've ever seen better fishing, but all the boats are sitting at the dock."

Schline's group was the exception. They chartered a boat with a fellow aging lacrosse player, Capt. Mike Lipski (Patapsco High, Essex Community College) out of Harrison's Chesapeake House on Tilghman Island, as they do four or five times a season. This time they got a special break.

Harrison's may be the bay's first charter operation to acknowledge the economic downturn by cutting prices. Their "Recession-Buster Special" ads popped up two weeks ago offering a day of rockfishing with lunch for $70 a person, a substantial break from the standard bay rate these days of around $700 for a six-person charter.

"We're trying to be the Wal-Mart of fishing," said longtime proprietor Capt. Buddy Harrison. "Wal-Mart's parking lot is full, everybody else's is empty. We figure it's better to create business and make less per person than just sit here doing nothing."

The ads caught the eye of this old bargain hunter. These days you can hardly go to a baseball game and eat a couple of hot dogs for $70. Harrison's at least gives you fried chicken in the box lunch -- and fish to take home for dinner if all goes according to plan.

So I toodled down to Tilghman on Wednesday morning to fish with a bunch of guys I didn't know, which almost cost me as I tarried to get coffee and nearly missed the boat. The lads had the lines off and the diesel roaring on Lipski's wooden boat when I came down the dock a-running.

No need to panic, as it turned out. The fishing grounds lay just 15 minutes away off the southwest tip of Poplar Island. Mate Shannon Pickens got the first trolling line out with an umbrella rig on it and before he could get a second rod set, the first of the day's many cries rang out: "Fish on!"

So it went for the next hour. By the end, Lipski's eyes were glued to the Fish Finder, which showed a school of rockfish stacked five feet deep on the bottom in 20 feet of water. The action had really heated up by then and we quickly had our limit of two fish per man, ranging in size from 20 to 28 inches, and were heading back to the dock by 8:15 a.m.

"I think this may be the best day we ever had," Lipski said to Joe Quingert of Towson, who arranges fishing excursions for his lacrosse buddies.

Speaking of lacrosse, I must say that my boat-mates were surprisingly deferential when the action got hot, waving me toward whatever rod was bobbing with the weight of a bite. Among themselves, though, not so much. A good referee would have called several cross-checks, a few moving picks and countless unsportsmanlike conducts during the sprints to the rods. Lacrosse is no place for the fainthearted, of course, especially among these guys, playing out the string in over-40 and over-50 leagues.

As for the fish, they were fat and healthy, a nice change from the day before, when Kevin Kenno and I jigged bucktails at the Bay Bridge and boated five keeper rock, all but one of which were so marred with red lesions, he donned gloves to handle them.

Maryland officials are working hard to deduce why fish at the bridge seem particularly susceptible to disease. Two years ago many of the fish Kenno and I caught off the pilings had red sores; last year the percentage was lower. This year's early start for sick fish does not bode well for high summer at the bridge, when the affliction generally is at its worst.

The state already warns seafood lovers not to eat more than two meals of Chesapeake rockfish a month and to favor the smaller ones, which have had less time to absorb toxins. Last week a new warning was issued to eat no more than one meal a month of rockfish and bluefish caught along the Atlantic Coast because of high PCB levels. Pregnant women, women of childbearing age, kids 6 and younger and nursing mothers were told to avoid eating coastal rock and blues altogether.

So here we are, stuck again. We finally have fat rockfish stacked in shallow water but way too many folks are out of work and can't afford to go catch them, and those that can are not supposed to eat too many anyway. It's hard times, indeed.