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North Shore Report and dead fish
Fished Crane beach area Sunday morning from 6-9:00 via kayak and foot, mostly kayak. Caught a couple of stripers, largest about 25-26 inches. Not great day, but good to get out. Fishing seemed slow as I didn't see anyone else hook up and and only marked 5 fish the whole morning. First cast landed the 25-26 incher. Should have know that would be the highlight.

While walking Crane beach I saw 3 dead sand sharks and 4 dead skates. All the fish were within 1-200 feet of each other next to the main beach area at Crane's. My guess is some fisherman/fishermen used bait on Saturday night and killed all the "garbage" fish they caught. It was a very dissappointing sight and speaks very poorly for many fisherman. Despite the respect for fish and the ocean many of us have, just as many kill fish for no good reason and toss their trash while fishing. Can you really blame people when they complain about fisherman?

Soundking is back from the land of Chocolate and secret bank accounts and checked in with this:

North Shore 7/28-despite poor reports, bait keeps fish happy
Fished the bottom of the tide this evening, casting from the docks of my home port under schools of yoty herring. Big numbers of bait with terns crashing, but no real fish swirling. Decided to throw some of my yoty flahsback flies at them, and had great success with fish from mid teens to 33 inches, mostly low 20's. In only an hour or two of fishing I landed between 15 and 18 fish, from one spot, basically a fish every other cast. It was interesting to see that even though there was little to no surface activity I was able to pick off good numbers of fish by using quick, sharp injured strips. The fish would only hit in a keyed in zone just above the bottom, I think that these fish were actually treating the terns like choppers, picking off the injured ones as they fell under the school. This has been a bizzarre year behavior wise, and it continued tonight. Apply tactics like this when there is plenty of bait but no real fish seen, you might be suprised by what you come tight on! Tight Lines until tomorrow fellas!

Plum Island "54lbs"
Yes I said 54 lbs. Striper caught at joppa flat with a whole herring. Saw another 36"+ stiper caught with clams in the rips off the beach. My self 0, nothing, notta, zilch. The big one was cought in the morning by a 13 year old and the second cought at 3-330 pm in full daylight. I worked the rip with many paterns and no strikes. Looks like I'm bringing some clams today.
Frank c

That's tremendous news.  Onshore noted in a subsequent post that the last fish over 50 lb. to be weighed in up in the area was in 1991.  He also mentioned that there are rumors that another fish over 50 came out last week.

Capt. Charles Crue reports:

Merrimack River Report #11 July 30, 2003

This area has been experiencing some wild water temperature extremes that have had a definite impact on the fishing. Water temperatures, measured at the surface have ranged from about 49 degrees to 68 degrees depending on which side of the tide you happen to be in. There were corresponding differences in the air temperatures in the same area. The result of these conditions was that find feeding stripers were very difficult to find. Even the bait fishing charter boats were skunked. On incoming tides terns could be seen diving into the water to get sand eels. The river was full of eels. It looked like it should be good striper fishing but the only threat to the sand eels, from under the water, were cormorants. The stripers were not there. Occasionally we found stripers down deep and caught them by dragging flies or lures along the bottom.

I had one totally dead morning this past week where I could not find feeding fish anywhere. It was my first skunked trip of the season (I will take the angler out again free on a date of his choosing). A couple days after that trip I guided for clients that did fairly well in spite of the conditions. They caught stripers and a couple of blues and enjoyed fighting a couple big fish. Conditions were improving.

This morning I had a "captain's day off" so I went out to enjoy some casual fishing and to enjoy the great weather out on the water. The striper fishing has definitely improved. I caught and released about a dozen plus one bluefish. The two largest stripers worked my new Sage TCR 8 WT rod pretty hard. They were just shy of keepers. I met a couple friends heading to their marina to go to work. They reported a good morning with several legal sized stripers which they released. The water temperature was more normal than last week.