TEAZER Fishing Report
07.02.26
Here we are already with the Fourth of July right around the corner. We fished steady the last two weeks of June, grinding away at a string of inshore and family trips. Striper junkies are finding mackerel at the usual haunts - East Cod Ledge, West Cod Ledge, Hussey Sound, and out front of Portland Head Light. These sunny scorcher days are tough for striper anglers, but the game changes during the lowlight hours and through the night. Plugging the surf (try a Mag Darter or Bomber 16a) or slinging live eels after hours can be the ticket to a big July bass.
Our offshore season kicked off last weekend and we will be working the groundfish daily for the next month. The fishing has been decent, and getting hotter by the day. We are finding thick schools of pollock in 230-280 ft. in the troughs between the high ground humps. Many of these fish are sub-legal in the 16-18.5 in. range, and we are weeding through them to land the occasional 19-24 in. legal fish. Measure carefully. Pollock are especially receptive to jigs. We like fishing “old school” with a chrome 16-20 oz. Norwegian jig and a pink teaser - either a bucktail or soft plastic, anything “shrimpy.” Replace stock trebles on the jigs with a single hook. For bait, thumbnail-sized pieces of clam and mackerel are hard to beat. Legal haddock in the 17-21 in. range are mixed in with the pollock, and we have found some nice keeper redfish over the rocky bottom in 240 ft.
Despite our best efforts to avoid them, we are encountering strong numbers of cod - and quality fish too. We released several beauties in the 12-15 lb. range. Handle these fish gently; burp them against the rail, and send them with a gentle head-first splash.
As we head further into July and August, the whiting (silver hake) bite should turn on as they swim up on the bank to spawn. Expect the whiting bite to pick up in the next two weeks. Over the past few seasons, whiting have composed the bulk of our mid-summer groundfishery. They are one of the tastiest fish in our waters.
We have encountered beefy beagles in the 200-300 lb. range nearly every trip offshore. Like other members of the Lamnidae family, porbeagles find a fresh mackerel hard to resist. We practice catch and release on all sharks aboard the TEAZER. While trying to tempt a beagle on Monday, I chummed in a blue shark. The surface temperature was 61.8 F. We are looking forward to another banner shark season beginning next month.
The tuna scene has been quiet. We saw a single football explode on a school of mackerel earlier this week. The commercial guys are quietly unloading a few fish from the distant grounds, and we saw a number of stick boats working their way SE earlier this week. When the bluefin do settle in, there will certainly be plenty of feed for them. The bait is thick offshore with top to bottom mackerel, along with herring and squid. We are snagging all three with our groundfish rigs!
The Gulf of Maine is calling your name! Heed the call. And don’t blink or you might miss the summer here. Go make some memories.
Jonah Paris
First Mate
TEAZER Charters
South Portland, Maine
jonaheparis@gmail.com