CRISFIELD -- Inside the cabin of Curtis Johns' new 50-foot charterboat, the air was warm and thick with cigar smoke and conversation, while outside, Tangier Sound was roiled by a cold northwest wind into a display of raw power and brutal beauty.
Johns and Keith Ward, two Crisfield charterboat captains who have felt the economic pinch caused by the pfisteria outbreaks this summer in a handful of tributaries off Tangier Sound, had organized a fishing junket to get out the word that fishing in the Crisfield area is safe and fruitful.
pTC But, as on other days during this season of hysteria, the day seemed to be going wrong, slapped down by 25 and more knots of wind and a contrary tide.
"On another day, we'd run out to the Middle Grounds and chum for rockfish," said Johns, as the twin-diesel Karen Ray II worked easily through sharp, three-foot seas. "But you have to know we're in protected water here, and out beyond Smith Island it would be unmerciful."
Ward, who runs the charterboat Prime Time out of Somers Cove Marina, and Johns said fishing for rock in Tangier and Pocomoke sounds and the Middle Grounds is very good now and will improve as the Maryland season progresses through November.
"We get the rock in here a little later than people up the bay," said Ward, who has plans to buy a Carman 45 similar to Johns' for next season. "When the water is getting really cold up there, it's still warm enough to fish down here. And when the Maryland season ends, we can go into Virginia waters for their December season.
"We'll fish until the fishermen stop coming."
The lower bay does offer a different setting than the Dumping Grounds near the Bay Bridge or the flats and edges of Sharps Island at the mouth of the Choptank River.
The sounds are cut with deep channels and broken by humps and flats, spits of sand and hard ground surrounded by marshes. And through the year a number of species come to feed -- rockfish, blues, sea trout, speckled trout, cobia, sea bass, channel bass, spot, croaker, flounder.
"I've always felt Crisfield is a gem, in terms of sport fishing," said Department of Natural Resources Secretary John R. Griffin, as Johns worked the Karen Ray II into position against wind and tide at the Puppy Hole on Tuesday. "It is true that it is out of the way and not as easy to get to as other fishing centers, but once you're here, the possibilities are incredible."
