It’s been a while since you put your Chesapeake Bay fishing and Mid-Atlantic angling know-how to the test? Well, maybe so—it is, after all, February. So, let’s find out how you rank as the 2026 fishing season gets ready to crank up.
1. You haven’t been out in weeks and you have no recent intel. To choose a lure color, you will:
A. Glance out at the water.
B. Choose something realistic.
C. Choose the gaudiest thing in the tacklebox.
D. Squint.
2. In most cases braid line works best for casting and retrieving lures. One exception is:
A. Inline spinners.
B. Jigging with spoons down deep vertically.
C. Walk-the-dog topwater lures.
D. The Alex Langer Flying Lure.
3. You forgot to remove a Gulp! from your lucky jighead when you got home, and now it’s hardened up like cement. To get it off without ruining the jighead you’ll need:
A. A bucket of water.
B. Sharp scissors.
C. A segment of 20-pound braid.
D. A blowtorch.
4. Which species of Chesapeake Bay sportfish is known for hitting lures when they’re “dead-sticked” (hanging static with no jigging action added by the angler).
A. Bluefish.
B. Flounder.
C. Weakfish.
D. Sockeye salmon.
5. You plan to fish around shallow weedbeds for redfish this spring in your new boat. Good thing you know that out of these four items, the ________ has the most potential to spook fish.
A. The livewell pump.
B. Your fishfinder.
C. Your electric trolling motor.
D. None of the above, reds don’t spook.
6. The rockfish are down deep and you have a livewell full of spot but no weights. To get that bait to the fish you’ll:
A. Hook it through the nose.
B. Hook it through the back.
C. Hook it through the belly.
D. Chop up the spot and drop down chunks.
7. The first hint of light is cracking the horizon, the water is like glass, and fish are in the shallows. You reach for:
A. An Aborgast Hula Popper.
B. A Zara Spook.
C. A Chug Norris
D. A beer.
8. You’re fishing live eels for cobia. The best way to handle them when putting them on the hook is to have:
A. A roll of paper towels.
B. Gloves.
C. A rag.
D. A stun-gun.
9. You’re hunting for salt-loving species and you often find yourself fishing the Eastern Shore. The water along the Eastern Shore of the Bay is higher salinity than the water on the Western Shore in part because of:
A. It isn’t, salinity is evenly spread from east to west.
B. The rotation of the moon.
C. The Coriolis Effect.
C. The QAnon Effect.
10. You want to get in on the snakehead action during the “spring push” when the fish become concentrated. This is when the fish:
A. Push far upriver.
B. Push far downriver.
C. Push up against the shorelines.
D. Push up onto shore and slither around where you can spear them with a frog gig.
Bonus Question: You drift out to sea on your kayak with nothing but your fishing gear. Your best chance for survival is to:
A. Yell really loud.
B. Hold off starvation by eating your soft plastic lures, which have digestible plastisol.
C. Hold off dehydration by drinking Gulp! juice.
D. Catch some fish and eat the eyeballs.
Answers: 1 – A. Matching lure color with water color is always a good start. 2 – C. Stretchy mono helps prevent skipping the lure out of the water and the stretch aids in slowing down the hook-sets. 3 – A. Drop it in and let it soak for several hours and the Gulp! will rehydrate, then slide right off. 4 – C. If you answered “D” you get an automatic zero on this quiz. 5 – C. All these things have some potential to spook fish, but electric trolling motors create prop noise with the intensity and pitch related to speed. Creep along at slow speeds and you aren’t likely to scare anything, but crank the motor up and prop noise can become a significant problem. 6 – B. Hooked through the back they usually head for bottom all on their own. Chopping them up might work at times, too, but definitely isn’t as likely to produce bites. 7 – B. Poppers and chuggers can spook fish in these conditions, and a quieter walk-the-dog presentation is likely to catch more fish. If you answered “D,” you have a problem. 8 – A. A pair of gloves or a rag will get slimed after a few eels and lose its grip. The stun gun might be a good move, but we haven’t actually tried it so we can’t say for sure. 9 – C. Flowing water in the northern hemisphere is pushed to the right, so salty water coming in from the ocean veers towards the east. The larger number of major west-side freshwater tributaries plays a role in east-west salinity, too. 10 – A. This usually happens in April and can lead to a very hot pre-spawn bite. Bonus: D, actually. Fish eyeballs are over 90-percent water. A, B, and C are likely to do more harm than good.
0 – 5 correct – Have you ever considered taking up golf?
6 – 8 correct – Keep reading FishTalk, there’s hope!
9+ correct – Congratulations, you’re a highliner.