Maryland is doubling down on efforts to combat invasive fish species in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, offering anglers a variety of opportunities to remove problem fish while competing for cash, prizes, and bragging rights. The state is offering charter boat captains up to $1,500 per trip through the new "Reel in the Blues Bonanza" program — and recreational anglers can sign up for a chance to fish for free.
If you go, gear for the fish and not for the average. Chesapeake blues run heavy and fight in current, and most of the ones that get away are lost to tackle that was never rated for them. The Big Country Fishing Rod is a 7'10" extra-heavy casting rod — enough backbone to sling a chunk of cut bait with a heavy sinker and still turn a fish that decides to run downstream with it. Above the sinker, run a heavy abrasion-resistant leader, 20 lb or better, because a channel-edge snag will chafe through anything lighter before you ever feel the bite. We will save you the click on that one: Venator does not sell fishing line or leader — no mono, no fluorocarbon, no braid — and nothing in our lineup substitutes for it, so pick your leader material up at a tackle shop and spend your money here on the rod that has to survive the fish.
Chesapeake invasives are having a moment more broadly. If you would rather shoot them than reel them, read our piece on bowfishing snakehead in the Chesapeake. The same bounty-and-removal playbook is being argued over in the Midwest too — see the Brandon Road fight over invasive carp and our look at whether silver carp can actually survive Lake Michigan. And if you are heading out for blues on your own clock rather than a bounty trip, our guide to summer bass and catfish patterns covers where they hold and when.