Well, I'm back from nine days of fishing in Maine. I probably averaged six hours per day.
While I'm too humiliated to tell how many I caught, I will confess that my nine day catch would have been considered average for a day several years ago. I'm not sure of the problem, but the water was in the low 50's until Saturday. When the water finally warmed up, the fish were hitting better, but still not well. I'm also told that there's tons of bait offshore and the fish have no reason to run the beaches. I'm especially disappointed because early June started off so much better than last year. However, I'll be out there again on Friday, as I will every other weekend until mid-October, with renewed enthusiasm.

MartyK, howya doing?

I was up in Camp Ellis/OOB last weekend. Several people mentioned large schools of herring 10+ miles offshore with vast amounts of stripers feeding on them. Fishing inshore was relatively quiet. We managed several "slot fish" on the tube and worm trolled off the Camp Ellis jetties, both sides. But was very week along the shore...

Hi John. Admittedly, I didn't vary my fishing very much. I was mostly heaving chunks of mackerel which leads me to a question on setting the drag. Some guys like it real loose while others say it should be set just below the point where a large fish would snap the line. What's you opinion, John? I'm mostly in a spike until I know they're out there.