Welcome to the new year.
While you’re busy making plans to return to the real world after a couple of weeks of holiday, or working out the details to help you tackle your all-important resolutions, there is something else to consider.
Believe it or not, this can be an excellent time of year to put fish in the boat.
And even though it’s no midsummer bonanza, there’s still a little something for everyone.
Weather and your ability to fight off the cold are just about the only constraints.
So what could be biting?
Go buy a lottery ticket at the gas station as you fill up the tanks and hit the water to find out.
There are several things that will help or hinder your decision on what to go after – like just what species to target.
But since we’re pretty much surrounded by saltwater, let’s start there.
Topping our list is speckled trout and puppy drum. Southside inlets and creeks can be a location for fish suffering from cold stun, but that number often is a lot less than people think.
Bluefish could be in that mix, especially where there is deep water close by. Big choppers will be found around some coastal wrecks.
This is a favorite time of year for tautog anglers, as the species comes more inland to live around structure like the islands of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel or the Cape Henry wreck. Never neglect those “secret” rubble piles you know about.
There will be fish – especially flounder – around some of the coastal wrecks, but they can be slower to attack offerings. Sea bass catches have been outstanding the last month, with some big ones being harvested.
Big striped bass were being found in good numbers just off the western side of the Eastern Shore, but all are too big to keep and seasons are closed. Still, the action using live eels has been, at times, outstanding – with lots of fish topping the 45-inch release award minimum.
Big bluefin tuna have been present off Virginia Beach and the Outer Banks, but the feds in all their wisdom decided to close the fishery because the “commercial quota had been exceeded.”
With the arrival of 2026, the door has been reopened to keep bluefin. Take a lawyer fishing with you so you can make sense of all the rules and regulations.
And what I’d call a seriously disturbing situation has taken hold in North Carolina waters.
Anglers now are being forced to report all red drum, speckled trout, striper, gray trout and flounder that are caught and kept.
Then state fisheries “experts” threw gas on an already hot fire and are begging speckled trout anglers to let them know about any cold stun events are found when freezing temperatures kill schools of fish.
And you know what happens after that – that’s right, the fishery, like it has in the past, will get shut down.
It seems that pouring lots on money into the state’s economy just isn’t enough.
If it all seems too much, skip it and hit some of the outstanding freshwater locations in both states.
Places like the water retention lakes in Suffolk provide excellent opportunity when everything else seems like a disastrous mess.
Anglers can find largemouth bass, crappie, bluegill, shellcracker, white and yellow perch, and catfish just about everywhere.
Action on the bottom of creek channels – or along the edges of them – are usually the best locations this time of year. Action can heat up significantly when there are several sunny days with temperatures in the 50s.
And a rule of thumb in the winter freshwater scene is simple must-do – fish slow, then slow down some more.
To read more of my work, go to: leetolliveroutdoors.com
