Fishing Castine Maine

Mackerel provide fairly dependable sport for light-tackle anglers off Castine. Courtesy Wikimeda Commons.

Mackerel are the closest thing to a sure bet here, usually making their appearance in late May and early July. You can find the 1- to 2-pound macks working close to shore early and late in the day through the summer and into September. You can even catch them right in front of the Castine town dock. Many anglers use mackerel trees to catch the speedy torpedoes in quantity. For more sport, however, you can toss a small jig or tin with a 6- to 8-pound-test spinning outfit and have a blast battling these fish one at a time. Fly-fishermen can also catch them on epoxy minnows retrieved with rapid twitches on a 5- to 7-weight outfit.

As the mackerel begin to settle down in June, stripers arrive at the mouth of the Bagaduce and move upriver to chase herring and alewives that are leaving their upstream spawning grounds. These early-run stripers can be large, with many topping out at between 20 and 30 pounds, and a few even cracking the 40-pound mark.

By early July, most of the stripers have eased their way back downriver, where they splinter into smaller pods and mix with schoolies. You can often score by working rocky points and humps between Castine and Harborside on Cape Rosier. Drifting live eels, mackerel fillets and mackerel chunks on the bottom is a popular method off Dice Head, at the mouth of Castine Harbor. Novice anglers should avoid trolling for the stripers in the Bagaduce, as the bottom is very rocky and snags are a problem.

Bluefish also visit the Bagaduce some years, but are unreliable targets. If they show, it’s usually at the mouth of the river between the Maritime Academy and Harborside, where you may be able to catch them on diamond jigs, topwaters, swimming plugs or spoons.Mackerel provide fairly dependable sport for light-tackle anglers off Castine. Courtesy Wikimeda Commons.