Unlikely fish story catches its share of fools

[Sam]

The return of chilly and rainy weather could slow the spawning run of rockfish for a few days, which is the good news. On the flip side, it obscures the fishing outlook for the weekend.

Surely there will be hungry white perch in the tributaries. In the Chesapeake proper, early rockfish will be available for any catch-and-release striper-chasers unwilling to allow a bit of sour weather to keep them ashore. It's a typical spring on the bay

Yet, there is a non-typical aspect to this particular spring. It involves either a fish that - if caught during open season would be a world record - or one of the biggest fish catching hoaxes ever on the bay. Read on.

It all started in cyberspace, where Darren Rickwood is reported to have said a fish he caught trolling down Solomons way tipped his boat scales beyond the maximum 90 pounds before it was released (as required for early catch-and-release fishing).

A picture of the fish was posted. The location of the catch was said to be in the shipping channel off the mouth of the Patuxent. It reportedly took a new Sassy Shad body of 24 inches worked on an umbrella rig. One Southern Maryland newspaper even printed the story.

After being in this business for 60 years and learning much about fishermen along the way, I'm naturally suspicious of catches of fish of outlandish size - and baits of the same. I know of no 24-inch Sassy Shad, nor of any stripers better than the world-record of 781/2 pounds caught in New Jersey in 1982. Either way, hoax or catch, it was bound to be a story.

I failed to locate a Capt. Darren Rickwood out of Solomons either by phone or e-mail, but I found many fishermen excited about the news. The buzz was on. Then I found in ultra-fine type on the e-mail message attributed to the Calvert News the date of the reported catch. It was April 1. "Obviously it's a hoax," said Department of Natural Resources's director of fisheries Howard King, who added "I only wish it was true." Amen.

On the non-fiction side, more than 15 years ago, Capt. Ed Darwin - who fishes the charter boat Becky-D out of Mill Creek - landed a probable world record at the Bay Bridge. In season, too. Ed doesn't believe in keeping extra-large stripers and his Catonsville fishermen released it after measurements were taken and sent to DNR, where it was estimated it would probably have been in the 80-pound class. Yet, to this day, Ed says he would do it again. He has proof of his catch in home movies.

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