New Hampshire:

Saltwater fishing was active last week in the Granite State. Jason MacKenzie at Suds-n-Soda Sports in Greenland said that some quality stripers were being caught at the mouth of the Piscataqua River and upriver in the vicinity of the fish processing plant in Newington. “They’re getting quite a few fish in the 34-36 inch range mostly on chunk mackerel. Another spot that stripers of about the same size are being taken is from shore at Newington’s Bloody Point.”
“There’s still an occasional school of mackerel showing up, and catching live pollock for bait around the Portsmouth tugboat docks has been steady. Cod and haddock have moved deeper. Flounder fishing at Pepperell Cove at Kittery Point and Rye Harbor has been the best since they started to show up,” he ended.
George Taylor at Taylor’s Trading Post in Madbury says that the striper fishing is holding up in Little Bay, especially around the bridges there. He suggests that chunk bait or seaworms are the best bet, and that night fishing can produce best.
News from the Pogy Patrol is that there are some decent stripers in the Fox Point area of Little Bay, where he had landed a 33 incher, the first keeper of the year for him. The fish took a live eel.
We talked with some fishermen at the Wentworth docks in Newcastle’s Little Harbor. They were fishing chunk mackerel off the docks for stripers and had been having some good luck on schoolie sized

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New Hampshire Fishing Reports

“The steadiest striper fishing has shifted into the night time,” reports Jason MacKenzie at Suds-n-Soda Sports in Greenland. “Paul Haydon and a friend fished near some of the lighted docks on the Piscataqua for two nights last week and both nights they caught over fifty fish, but for all that effort, only two of them were keepers. They were fishing the New Hampshire side in Newington.”
“There’s been some pretty good striper action at the Isles of Shoals as well as some bluefish. The bluefish have also been reported in the river, moving as far up as the General Sullivan Bridge at Dover Point. We had one big striper come in that made our leader board in our All Summer Long Striper Tourney. Jack Camden’s 32 pounder that was 43.5 inches is now in second place, and the second place fish was dropped to third place. That fish was caught on a chunk of mackerel off the Navy Yard on June 30th. The man that does our refrigeration here, Chuck Becker brought in two big stripers to be weighed. The largest one was 42 inches and weighed over 23 pounds while the smaller one was 39 inches and weighed 21 pounds—pretty respectable pair of fish!”
“We don’t have a clue why, but after leaving the Cocheco River at Henry Law Park in Dover last week, those big stripers returned this week along with another spurt of alewives,” Reports George Taylor at Taylor’s Trading Post in Barrington. “There were a lot of fish caught in the 29 to 33

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New Hampshire Fishing Report:
Jason MacKenzie at Suds-n-Soda Sports in Greenland reports that striper fishing has really taken off this weekend. “The alewife runs have picked up and there’s a lot of good sized stripers chasing them. The bulk of the action has been up into the rivers at the head of tide. The Squamscott (Exeter), Lamprey, Cocheco, and Salmon Falls Rivers are where it is happening. Although these fish will hit rubber shad and other artificials, most of the big fish are being caught on live alewives. The fishermen are catching the alewives on shad jigs or Sabiki rigs.”

“For the first time this season, we’re also hearing of some pretty good concentrations of stripers in the lower Piscataqua, especially around the Navy Yard. These fish are not showing on top and you have to fish deep. There’s been some mackerel showing up around the 2KR Buoy at the mouth of the river. Either live or chunk mackerel would be your best bet for those fish. Live pollock will also work.”

Jason added that the flounder situation was strange. “We’ve had people report catching a couple dozen flounder per boat with almost every one of them being an inch or so under the legal size limit. Maybe those larger flounder are just not here yet.”

George Taylor at Taylor’s Trading Post in Madbury echoed MacKenzie’s striper report, but added that at Henry Law Park in downtown Dover, the stripers have been there at all tides. “One of our guys

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Memorial Day weekend brought some summer weather and better conditions for fishing, both on the coast and inland. Trout fishermen were happy that the mayfly hatches had started and that water levels in the southern part of New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts had started to drop to more fishable conditions. Groundfishermen were finding some huge cod in the more inshore breeding grounds and plenty of haddock out on Jeffrey’s Ledge.

Chris Henson at Kittery Trading Post’s fishing department says to get ready for both the mackerel and the big stripers and bluefish that will be with them.

“Every year, in the first part of June, the long awaited mackerel invasion of our coastline starts. The fish will first show up in numbers inside the Isles of Shoals and often will gather around some of the small ledges and humps between the Shoals and the shoreline. Big stripers that have acclimated themselves to feeding almost exclusively on those mackerel will be with them and most often in June, the stripers will be accompanied by a northbound school of really big bluefish that also love to eat mackerel.”

“A good way to start off is to purchase some frozen mackerel or herring and also either grind your own or purchase some chum. Anchor your boat over likely looking structure if you can find some, otherwise, just by anchoring and chumming you should eventually have mackerel around you. To quicken your chances of hooking into a bluefish or

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