2024 Recap
The 2024 Season was truly one for the books, It was our first year officially as Flood Tide Outfitters. This year was full of firsts, personal bests and memories to last a lifetime.
The season started out strong in May with multiple days chasing bass boating 50+ fish including many over 3lbs. We really honed in on big Smallmouth bass on beds and site fished for the biggest ones you could see with jigs or sometimes custom bait fish flies. May tallied up to nearly 150 fish including a lot of really big large and smallmouth bass.’
June came on and the fishing didn’t seem to slow down. With warmer water on the coast we hit the Salt much earlier than previous years and were rewarded with awesome striped bass fishing over 2 weeks earlier than previous years. The fishing was phenomenal boating over 10 PB fish for clients and friends including 2 stripers over 40”. Many fish came trolling along with a bunch of live lining pogies along the rocky points and ledges, totalling over 100 fish for the month.
July came with the challenges of much warmer water and huge tide swings this year coupled with off tides for the prime fishing times so it made the fishing a little harder with the fish more spread out but we still managed to boat over 200 fish over 18 trips during the month.
During August my “real job” kept me off the boat more than I would have liked but we’ve got bills to pay. When we did hit the water we seemed to always be in the fish even with the challenges of finding bait. There were fewer fish around but the fish we were in were big boating a lot of upper 30” fish and one over 40”.
September is always a hard month for me, work gets busy with college kids going back to school leaving us short handed, deer season starts and I guide moose hunts in the ladder part of the month, but the fishing is also good. Too many things to do and not enough time. I did wrap up the season in early september with a few very successful charters along with a day for myself hauling my lobster traps for the season and fishing which resulted in matching and beating my own personal best striper in back to back fish around sunrise. Making my new PB 39”, I am still on the hunt for a 40” for myself.
All in all the season was incredible, and I can’t wait to kick off the 2025 season. If it’s anything like last year it will be yet another record breaking year. We ended the ‘24 season with 576 fish boated over 163hrs in the boat. The goal for 2025 is 200hrs and 600fish boated.
My plan as of right now is to do weekly updates throughout the season to keep people up to date on the current fishing conditions and highlight some of the bigger fish caught each week. I will also do recaps of turkey hunts in May. If you are interested in booking a trip fishing in beautiful midcoast Maine either freshwater or saltwater we have got you covered and can’t wait to put you on the fish.