Tangier Sound

A week or so ago, I was listening to one of those early-morning call-in radio programs as I was getting ready for a charter. This was an outdoor talk-radio-type program and the caller, let's call him Walt, was complaining about never seeing rockfish breaking or feeding on the surface any more.This would support the theory that there really aren't many rockfish and maybe we should not have opened the striped bass fishery in 1990.Had Walt taken his boat out that day, he could have seen thousands of rockfish breaking between the Bay Bridge and Love Point.

**** EXCELLENT*** GOOD** FAIR* POOR*Salt waterOCEANInshore *** Bluefish, kingfish and spot are in the surf. Tautog, sea trout and blues from 1 to 3 pounds have been turning up in the inlets. In the back bays and the Thoroughfare, flounder fishing has been good with drifted minnows.Offshore *** According to Tom Arthur of the Blue Marlin Tackle Company in Ocean City, marlin fishing has slowed a little, but there still are quite a few catches being made near Washington and Poor Man's canyons from the 50- to 500-fathom lines.

This weekend ...* How much longer will the rockfishing last? We should get the word late today or tomorrow. Word is the charter fishery is close to its quota of 161,206 pounds, and the recreational fishery is due to close as originally scheduled Saturday at 8 p.m., with a provision to reopen if the quota of 456,747 pounds is not reached.The Department of Natural Resources has been burning the midnight oil to keep abreast of catches, and it is apparent the charter season won't make it through its scheduled Nov. 9 close (see Question Box)

Rockfish season reopens SaturdayDon't put the rockfish tackle away.Following the unanimous recommendation of the Striped Bass Advisory Board,the department of Natural Resources today announced the Saturday reopening of the fall recreational rock fishery for five days over two consecutive weekends.The board's decision came after DNR reported the recreational fishery's catch was about 115,000 pounds shy of its quota Originally,provisions for an extension involved a limit of two rock a day,but that was reduced to one.The board's suggestion calls for fishing this Saturday and Sunday, then Friday through Sunday of next week -- with provisions for shortening (or eliminating)

**** EXCELLENT*** GOOD** FAIR* POOR Salt water OCEANInshore **** -- The number of keeper flounder (13-inch minimum) is steadily increasing in the back bays. Some of the better places have been between buoys 10 and 13 behind Assateague Island, the Thoroughfare and Horn Island. Drifting minnows works best. Sea trout have been active in the Ocean City Inlet and below the Route 50 bridge at night, taking bucktails and peelers. In the surf at Assateague and North Ocean City, kingfish, blues and spot have been active, although bluefish catches are not common.

CRISFIELD -- At mid-morning, the engine of a small plane drones off to the south. It is the only unnatural sound to be heard aboard Capt. Butch Tawes' bay-built Prime Time in Tangier Sound.The other sounds are what might be expected: the hum of the breeze, the muted slap of the bow in an almost flat sea and chuckles of satisfaction and giggles of delight as fish are hooked and brought aboard.It is Wednesday. On land, the temperature will reach toward the middle 90s, and later in the day, crowds will gather at Somers Cove Marina for the annual J. Millard Tawes Crab/Clam Bake.

WANT TO KNOW how the Chesapeake Bay's doing? It used to take a long answer because the bay's a big place. But soon, you might just be asked in return what river or creek is nearest you, and told to bring it up on a Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Web site. There you would find information on how clear the water is, how much oxygen's in it, how salty it is, whether conditions are prime for a fish kill or algae outbreak, and how conditions are for underwater grasses. Better yet, the information will be "real-time," based on measurements every 15 minutes; and you'll be able to see everything that's been going on within the last several hours.

The numbing, record-breaking cold wave that has Maryland in its grip brought discomfort and inconvenience to many yesterday as pipes froze and burst, engines stalled and exposed skin felt the sting of winter.But the residents of the islands in the Chesapeake Bay were truly in a bind, cut off from the mainland by ice that prevented the arrival of boats that regularly deliver mail and provisions. Ice-breaking cutters came to the rescue yesterday, bringing much-needed deliveries of staples such as food, milk and medicine.

"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy," wrote essayist E.B. White; "and if it were merely challenging that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. "This makes it hard to plan the day. " We know what White meant. But sometimes nature allows no waffling; like the weekend when she suffused the Chesapeake Bay with such glory there was nothing for it but to stop saving the world and simply revel in it. We launched on a golden, placid morning from Bishops Head, a peninsula dangling from the marshy underbelly of Dorchester County.

As we pull out of the harbor at Crisfield, Tangier Sound is pleated with waves. Gulls hoping for a handout sail alongside, suspended on air currents like objects in a child's mobile. I've hitched an early-morning ride on the mail boat to Tangier Island, Va., a place of legendary skipjack captains, watermen and age-old traditions. I've longed to visit this place since first sailing past it years ago. Although it's called an island, Tangier is more like a dense little archipelago -- chunks of sand and salt marsh split by tidal canals called "guts" that are linked by small, arched bridges.