A bonus for fishermen this time of year is spotting whales, and summer is peak whale-watching season for humpback, minke and finback whales.
Jake Hall was striper fishing in Penobscot Bay when he spotted this humpback whale around 7:30 a.m. yesterday.
Hall said he was about a half mile from the public landing in Searsport Harbor, facing Sears Island, when he saw the whale.
As seen in the video, the whale is lunge feeding, a hunting strategy in which humpback whales surge through dense schools of fish with their mouths open, engulfing prey before filtering out the water through their baleen plates.
“There are a lot of pogies right now, and the mackerel are thick as well,” Hall said.
It was Hall’s first whale sighting of the season, although he’s been out fishing 15 times so far this year. Last year, he saw two smaller whales, but they sounded — diving deep before he got the chance to photograph or identify them.
Even if you don’t have a boat, there’s still a good chance of spotting whales from shore, including the public pier in Searsport.
“The whale was right out in front of the dock at one point,” he said.