Excellent Late Summer Fishing on the Maine Coast

Artificial Lure here with your Atlantic Maine fishing report for Friday, September 5th, 2025.

We kicked off the day under clear skies—some high thin clouds floating by early with absolutely no humidity. The wind held off until about 10 AM, then settled in steady out of the south at 10 knots before calming again near sunset. Temps hovered in the mid to high 70s, peaking briefly at 80°F before the ocean breezes cooled things off. Sunrise came at 6:00 AM, and sunset’s due at 7:01 PM—golden hour looks perfect for a last cast.

Tides are running strong today. Low tide hit at 3:25 AM and again at 3:35 PM; those shallow periods are always great for hunting feeding stripers along the edges and in river mouths. Mark your prime spots for high tide at 9:35 AM and 9:46 PM, when the bait moves up into rocky coves and channels, drawing bigger predators close.

This week, the catching’s been borderline excellent by late-summer standards. According to Bunny Clark’s daily update, most of the catch offshore has been pollock—the top dogs hauled in a good run of pollock with several in the 12 to 14-pound range, along with a handful of legal haddock and cusk. Mackerel are lively around deeper ledges, keeping rods bent all morning. Released fish included hefty cod (some over 6 pounds), stacks of smaller pollock and haddock, plus some blue sharks and plenty of dogfish, though those pests weren’t much of a problem today.

Nearshore, folks working the weedlines and rock piles are pulling in late-summer bass. The bite for both smallmouth and largemouth has been reliably strong as the fall transition gets underway. Ned rigs, jigs, and craw-colored chatterbaits are all getting hit in the freshwater kettle ponds. If you’re aiming for bigger bass, Outdoor News recommends heavy punch rigs with green pumpkin plastics like Missile Baits Baby D-Bomb or Smallie Beaver, pitched hard into thick vegetation or rock cover.

Offshore, tautog, heavyweight fluke, and some jumbo whiting have taken center stage. If bottom fishing is on your agenda, jigs and cod flies are outperforming everything else—drift fishing with these classics has put the most fish on deck.

Best baits lately:
- Jigs tipped with clam or squid for pollock and haddock
- Cod flies for drifting deeper ledges
- Green pumpkin soft plastics and craws for bass in vegetation or rocky cover
- Live mackerel for striped bass near river mouths
- Chunk bait for blues and the occasional albie

Hotspots not to miss:
- Jeffrey’s Ledge: Still producing solid numbers of pollock, cusk, haddock, and cod.
- Saco/Ogunquit River Mouths: Striper activity picks up around low tide in the shallow wash as they chase herring fry.
- Bar Harbor’s Frenchman Bay: Mackerel, stripers, and occasional bluefish on the move with the tide shifts.
- Black Point and Scarborough Marsh: Fantastic late-summer bass and schoolie striper action, particularly at dawn and dusk.

There’s plenty of excitement as albies, bonito, and Spanish mackerel start showing just off the beaches, especially on outer islands and points. As September rolls on, expect these runs to get even hotter. The best action has been near jetties and rock piles where baitfish cluster; top lures include Game On Exo jigs and Island X Hellfire for quick-moving targets.

That’s your rundown for the day. Thanks for tuning in—be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss tomorrow’s bite. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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