We all love lists; To-Do lists, Greatest Movies, Best Places To Live. Shoot, David Letterman made a career off of it.
Here's one for bass anglers. Every year since 2012, Bassmaster Magazine has put together a list of the Best 100 Bass Lakes in the country. The list usually appears in the magazine's May issue. But this year, the editors put it on hold for a few months.
"We waited to include it in our July/August issue so we could collect catch-rate data from the spring to evaluate the health and productivity of each fishery,” said editor James Hall.
As expected, many of the waters on the list come from the south, west and Great Lakes areas, places like Guntersville, Havasu and Erie. So why am I writing about the list?
Because Maryland is on that list. Sitting at No. 57 on Bassmaster's list is the Upper Chesapeake Bay. That's the Bay's highest ranking ever. It didn't make the list in 2012, locked up the #58 spot in 2013 and then almost slipped off the list last year.
A lot of bass clubs from Maryland and southern Pennsylvania hold tournaments in this section of the Bay. The Susquehanna Flats get a talked up a lot by those guys, who say it's incredible if you love fishing grass.
According to Bassmaster, at an event last June it took nearly 23 pounds of fish to win and the average fish weighed in the Upper Bay is now over 3 pounds.
And that's what the Bassmaster Elite Series pros will be looking for when they come here later this summer. The seventh event on their calendar launches out of Cecil County on August 13 and I can't wait to head up there and check that out. Till then, you can check out Bassmaster's Best Bass Lakes of 2015 here.
* Jeff Herman is the assistant news director at WMAR | ABC2. His main passion while not at work is fishing. This column is part of a series of columns he writes for our outdoors page . You can read more of his columns here .
