Working and fishing too much to write. How can work get in the way of fishing, well I am no richer now than I have been so I still keep going. My work is great and I love doing it but it all too often gets in the way of good fishing weather.
Ok, so to catch you on my fishing adventures. The week of Dec 12th was a very good fishing week but nothing stood out. It is shameful that going and catching nice keeper size fish (but not extraordinary) becomes mundane. We went out every day, the wind held and caught limit every time. Terrible to think of that is not newsworthy but all of the fish were about 21 -24. We didn’t catch the big one.
Road runner and bottom bouncing is a new lure and method we have been working on and it has its place in your arsenal. I’ll give it its own page that maybe will come out one day this week if the wind blows. The road runner for us has been productive and we caught multiple on that rig so definitely add it to your box.
Friday, Mitch and I went on his boat and our friend Dave went on his with his son and son’s friend. The Dave group had gone on Thursday and just crushed them. We got out to the NNK reef just before Dave did and we both trolled just east of the reef and maybe just a bit north of R62.
The FISH, we were about a ¼ mile from Dave and I could hear screaming. I was looking intently to make certain they were not in distress. Boy anything but distress, they had just landed a 46” fish. Dave called to confirm the size limitations and asked me to look again. I get it he had the fish of his life on deck but let her go as expected. Dave, now that is the fish.
Saturday a bunch of friends chartered Capt Jack Frazier. We were headed down I expect to the cut channel but he saw a massive amount of birds just east of the incredible line of fish nets. He was not a fan of heading over there but since I had just been there the day before and others with great eyes we spotted for him a path through. Wow, just wow, we had our limit in about 15 mins. So quickly we were able to regroup at the house and we all went back out in our boats.
We had Ron on the Top Seacret, Dave on Playing Hooky, Vince, Mitch, and me on the Mytical River. We all got into them so it was a great day.
Today the world lost a great person and I lost a dear friend. Patsy Sylvia went home with the Lord last night and I am so sorry for the loss. Buddy and all of the family I just want to say how sorry I am for your loss and how I mourn with you. The world is losing so many of our great champions and Patsy’s legacy is so great the entire community is suffering. She was not merely a great family leader but a leader in our community. Her pleasant smile was as infectious as it could be and she had such a great way of communicating I could just sit and talk to her for as long as I could.
I truly enjoyed our time together, going over Bible verses, eating together at our neighborhood picnics, etc. She had such a great attitude in facing giant struggles in her health. She faced them looking them in the eye full of life and ready to fight for her family’s sake and fully prepared for the final outcome. If we could all be that brave, the world would surely be a better place. The world in fact is a better place for her being a part of it and I for one am a better person being affected by her. All of us could learn from her, she was way more concerned for her family and her friends than she ever was with herself.
She loved her family, friends, and community and the world loved her right back. It was impossible to know her and not love her. She came to all of the neighborhood events and it was easy to see the crowd drawn to her.
Patsy loved the Lord and she is finally resting peacefully. I can only say we should all direct our lives to accept Christ as our Savior and Patsy we will see you soon.
Well today after church Soctt and I decided the bay was down enough to give it a go. The winds were still brisk but the wave action was a manageable 1 to 2 feet. We left the dock at about 12:40 heading to ole reliable R62. We didn’t stick to our original plan (as normal). We stopped around 1 GW when we saw a bunch of birds working. One thing that is new this year or at least not like normal years is that even when the birds are working they seem to stay in one place for only a few minutes. Anyway we didn’t catch a thing nor did we see much on the sonar. With that we headed to 63 which has been a traditional favorite.
Well nothing was happening at 63 so we headed east to the NNK reef or really just above. We trolled across the channel and in about 160 feet of water we saw more bait than I had seen in years but it was definitely at the bottom. As we got closer we saw a few boats together so checking them out I realized it was really a long-lined net fisher. So anyone heading to the reef, actually just north of the reef all of the way to about even with SP Lighthouse be careful.
So turning dead south to steer well clear of the nets we head back to our destination of R62. Maybe just barely above the reef in about 45 ft of water we ran into the herd. That is one reason we love striper fishing so much, is that you can go from a calm Sunday afternoon to total chaos. We had put one keeper in the boat early in the channel but every rod we had went down and it either had two fish or a big one.
At the end of the chaos we finally kept one 24 and one 27 inch fish. Same baits as normal with purple leading the charge as normal. Ended the day with 8 fish, 5 of which were keeper size, and would have loved to get going but the two we kept were enough for us anyway.
The water was 48.9 degrees and very clear, the sky had plenty of sunlight and the waves, as I said before, were about 1.5 feet from the SE.
Now today is why we fish. Today was just one of those special days. We had my friend Brandon and his two sons Asher and Sage added Mitch to help keep everything straight and we went fishing. We knew early morning there were more waves than the two boys were going to want to handle so we didn’t leave the dock until about 10 am. We got as far as the R2 buoy just outside of the Great Wicommico before it got too rough to motor but not too rough to fish so we set out our four lines.
We started trolling north toward 63 and Smith Point. There was just tons of bait and fish on the sounder but I could not get anything to bite. A little discouragement on the boat setting in but we started seeing some birds gathering so I knew it was not going to be long now. I would say around 11:15 or so we caught the first 20”. Looking back we should have thrown it back but I wanted to have at least one for the boys to take home. There was a massive birdnado behind us (from exactly where we had been) so we turned around. From that point on crazy fishing was the tag of the day. Just one nice fish after the next got on. The boys and Brandon had a nice time and Mitch and I were glad to have a good luck charm on the boat.
The weather turned out to be great even with an early cold start the sun was out in full feature so it felt warm regardless. This certainly reminded me of great fishing we have had in the past. I have not had this success so far this year and glad to have this come up today.
Today is Veterans day and I will be leaving with Mitch to fish today but unless there is a huge story I will not include this fish tale today. TOday is just too much of a devoted story of ours to write about fishing. We can fish today because of all the effort and sacrifice of our brave members of the military. We take for granted all too often the benefits we receive from having such great security that is afforded by our troops. There is no country that compares to the US at least not favorably. People go all over the world and they are glad to be back in the best country there is as soon as they can.
Well it was such a beautiful day I just couldn’t work so I took the day vacation. I had a few things to work on but I took the mid day to fish. I went out by myself, which is not always fantastic but sometimes is a good way to fish. I ended up with the one keeper I could take and had him for lunch. It was a 22″ and I was glad to have a relaxing day.
The bait was one of my favorites, which is an umbrella with a clear silver fleck and blue head. Again I am just going to have to take a picture of each of my rigs and I will back date some of these posts with the actual rig.
I ended up in the GW and fished from the mouth to the bridge. I hooked him on the way from the bridge out so not sure how far but a good way.
Water temp was 55.5 and here are the weather patterns.
Well today was much like the postal services motto, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”, though I think today that only applies to junk mail not letters or important items. But anyway, Scott and I decided to brave the elements of rain, cold, not fog but I was expecting a cloud to descend too low for comfort any time. It could have been miserable but leaving late (maybe 3:30) in the afternoon we knew we had precious time to waste so we stopped just at the entrance of Cockerells creek and started to troll with our last year’s most reliable baits.
We trolled out of the river into the Bay just a bit but the further we went out the warmer the water and the less bait we saw on the sonar. Even though it was mostly calm we did have a 1 foot swell that was headed in the wrong direction plus a lot of other factors we just decided to turn back to the river.
Overhead we could see a few birds gathering up high just inside the creek so we headed there. It was pretty close to the opening of the creek into the river where we had the first rod go down. Scott grabbed that one and you guessed it, the two other rods bent. “Panderlearim” was on, we had two fish per rod and it was such a good feeling to see the fish on. That happened multiple times from there to the end of the journey. We ended up catching 19 in pretty quick succession. We didn’t measure them all because we were far more interested in getting them back in the water but a few would have been 17 but the majority were likely 19 and a few over 20.
We did bring one back so I could have lunch tomorrow but it is such a good time to go out and grab a bunch of healthy fish and put them right back to grow.
Lures, I just need to go grab some pictures but this time of year I pull 4 or 6 arm umbrellas with varied color combinations. Check that link out and you will at least be close. The best color last year and seems great this year is purple head and blueish clear silver flecked 5 inch swim shad.
Water temp in the river was 60.1 and out in the bay was 61.5. Based on upcoming weather I expect it to drop quickly which should help the fishing pick up.
For me that day was Sat Oct. 9th even though the first day was Mon. I was working so this is the first report. I made a pact with myself to report everytime I fished regardless and this is one of the reports that did not have a big win for us but here it is regardless.
There have been loads of fish in our Whay’s creek and every “green light” has tons of fish around but I have heard of only one good Striper and that was our new neighbor Denny. He and Jennifer caught a 24 inch earlier in the week. Sharon had caught a good flounder and her dad Buddy caught a monster puppy drum (I’ll add the pic below).
Scott, Mitch, and I headed out to the 200 bridge to start our early morning run. Nothing, no hits, just nothing. Moved around to Glen’s creek then to the north side of the GW and then onto Warehouse creek. I finally picked up a nice speckle trout and Mitch added a spec and an undersized striper. Nothing really to show for our effort except laughing at all of the crazy that comes with fishing with friends. I’ll have to add wind direction to my article on 50 things that have to go right , 2, and 3 because the East and North winds are exceptionally difficult to fish and we had them both.
Finally, we went back to our Whay’s creek and just at the mouth there were a lot of birds working. We caught a bunch of speckles, flounder, snakeheads, etc. but no stripers. Anyway, a good day of fishing even if we threw everything back. The weather held out and we had a good day of fishing regardless of the fishbox.
Here is the puppy drum Buddy caught this week. Just two doors down from his house. We laugh but we often go all over the Bay and some of the very best fishing is in our backyard. Congrats Buddy, what a nice fish.
The goal of this post is to remove the politics of the fishery and “whose” fault it is and add a non-scientific but evidence based report from a lowly recreational fisherman who loves the bay and all it promises to us.
Current state of the bay. The water looks great to an untrained eye. I was out a couple of weeks ago now and it was just beautiful water. Even in the chop you could just look at the color and it looks great. Now visual observation is just one of many and maybe one of the least important factors but “I’m just saying”.
Well looks can be deceiving and based on every score card I can find online the health of the bay is a solid C. Now being a solid C student in grade school I can tell you that better is very possible. Only after I grew out of myself did I realize that I wasted a good portion of my life by not striving for greatness regardless of how many times I failed. The key to this obvious trouble, the answer is completely in our hands and our wheelhouse.
The answer to this and many other issues is to get people not the “other people” but simply you and I as individuals to take responsibility. Yes the government has a role to play but nothing significant in my life has ever happened because of a government mandate but rather me realizing that I, me, personally can have an impact. If you can get 300 million Americans really and truly caring about the environment in 300 million unique ways the impact is immediate. There is no government organization that can monitor the personal activities of that many people so this has to become core to you and not rely on the government to keep others in check.
The Chesapeake watershed, defined as the body of land that if a drop of water hits, will eventually find its way to the bay. How many people in the farm lands of NY, PA, MD, WV, DE, and VA realize how much effect they have on the bay. My guess tells me they do the best they can but the bay and the effects of farming has on the bay is 15th on their list of priorities. How can we help these farmers out and is it possible to help them financially in managing their effect vs. a penalty if they don’t conform. Can environmental cleanup become a source of income for these farmers? If yes then fantastic and it will certainly go to a better curator of money than a PAC. I personally think the carrot is more effective than the stick when there is not enough resources to monitor the stick method.
Second in negative effect on the bay is urban street runoff and water treatment issues. Well if the government has a play in this cleanup the very best place to start is to with themselves as an individual contributor. This could be the first, best, and easiest choice to fix a grand portion of the problem. I would say this because rather than 10s of thousands of farmers there are just hundreds of cities and they have better ways to improve their facilities so the benefit vs time is just better here. I know, pass the infrastructure bill…well I hope that when it does pass this may actually get fixed but based on the last hundred years I would expect more of the same. Just like all churches have a building fund but the same door squeaks for eternity. I would love to be wrong for a change so time will tell.
I’ll leave the Omega Protein company out of this post while only adding that politics always beats evidence. I could care less if you are for or against commercial fishing but what I think we have to live with is the limits our legal entities set on bag limits. So I follow the rules because regardless if I fully understand the limits it is the only measure we have. I want a standard for all of us to live by and encourage all to follow the rules as if they matter because they do in fact matter. If these agencies tell me one fish per day that is what I live by or less. If they want me to report all of my catches I am fully in on the requirement. My goal is not to fill my freezer with fish but to enjoy fishing. Besides, the most expensive fish you will ever eat is the one you catch.
Moving on to how the bay has changed. Shrimp and in great numbers are being seen for at least the first time for me. Never did I imagine that shrimp would be a food source from the bay and at least I am hoping that it will become a new food for stripers, they certainly seem to love them. We have seen species in the bay that I would never have expected like sturgeon as an example. This could be climate change, or maybe they were here but in small numbers, I just don’t know.
Change seems to be the only constant but regardless of if this change is natural or man-made it is my responsibility to have the least impact on the bay as possible. One day we will stand in judgment and I don’t want to try to explain that I was anything other than caring for our great world. Caring for people, caring for the environment is one in the same for me.
Well I certainly didn’t add anything new to this conversation but if I have a goal here it is to get you to think of a way to change from being be part of the problem to more about how to be part of the solution. We all have a part in the process so think before you act.
I guess you can see why I don’t allow every idiot on the internet to comment on my blog, I just send them out in a bottle and you can read or not, either way is just fine by me. Anyway hopefully my next post will be more about fishing. We are just a couple of weeks away from my time of the year.
