Fishing Reports

This is a fishing report blog and certainly we will go over the many fishing adventures I have had with my friends over this year but 2020 will only go down in history for only one reason, Covid 19. This virus has dominated the world all year with no let up, it has ruined our families with devastating departures of our loved ones, taken away our ability to hold dear those that we love and ruined so many lives it is hard to put it on a valid scale. But, hopefully 2020 has clarified for us in a way we were previously incapable of understanding the things that are most precious to us. Our families, our friends, and our faith have finally had a chance to be prominent in our lives that we just took for granted all too often. 

Have you like me reevaluated everything that is important. Who would have thought toilet paper would be a most sought after commodity. A friend of my daughter, Sara brought a house warming gift of toilet paper with a bow on it, that is the only sign you need. The essentials of life have become that staples and not the extravagant. Our economy has changed to a way I dare say will ever return to the old normal way again. eCommerce is the current norm, buy local/sell local is becoming a thing of the past unless you have a niche market or service. I hope you are adopting my policy, I always buy local unless it is something I just can’t find. I built a deck this year before wood prices tripled, used boats are of higher value than ever and new boats are completely sold out. I feel for each of those that have lost their businesses but I don’t think the old norm will return and we need to see how we can help these people cope with the new norm not scratch to try to save an old model. 

Before I start the year of fishing I want to introduce you to one of the best things I have done that I have continually failed to mention but I think has made me a better person more capable of handling a year like 2020. In 2018, Chuck (aka Angelique) and I joined a group called Young Life devoted to the spiritual development and introduction to Christ in middle and high schoolers of Northumberland. I urge you to support this mission, the kids of Northumberland are truly better off with having this quality of young leaders to look up to as mentors. Our leader Laura was such a fantastic person I couldn’t help but want to be involved. After being promoted she was followed by a new leader Caty, again just such a fantastic person gives you great hope for the future. Kristi also a leader of the group and she being from the county knows what these kids have been through and is such a benefit to them. For me I get so much out of the experience it is hard to imagine, the kids look to me as another grandfather and have come up with the nickname Dr. Phil, a little because of my accent and a little at how I talk with them. Certainly one of the highlights of my week is when we can spend time with the kids. The time together is yet another thing that has been devastated by Covid. For people our age verbal and online seems to be working for most fine but remote learning and remote relationships for the kids is just not going to work. Donating yourself to a good volunteer program is just one way to level up, if you are having coping issues of any kind get out of yourself and go be involved with something that allows you to serve rather than be served, you will get more out of it than you give. 

I looked back in the blog to summarize the year and read the 2019 year in review first. What a terrible report, I looked at the world in a way that it disappointed me rather than what it did for me. In 2019 I had a great job, had a wonderful family and great friends, had our health, had a great faith and a great church to call home. This is what I hope 2020 has taught me and my hope for you is you reflect on 2019 as well. Maybe you didn’t have a blog to write about how the world had done you an injustice when the fish didn’t jump in the boat as expected or you had an unannounced expense that set your dream purchase back but I’m sure you are looking at the world differently today.

Fishing reports, we are finally here, and if you are still here thank you for reading this far. The spring striper fishing was cancelled but I could just look at the water in our creek and tell it was going to be a good year. You could just look and see more abundant life than normal. Cobia season this year was very good for the number of times we could get out. We caught the biggest Cobia I had ever caught and in general had a lot of Cobia over the rail. Went with Ron and Jack Cobia fishing, got one tagged fish which for me was the first and set a modern day record of 27 cobia in the day. Went tuna fishing off the coast with Captain Ryan Rogers and Doug, had a great time and caught a bunch of fish. Set a few friends up for a record like my friend Basil, he caught three species of fish in one day that he had previously never caught. Had a good Spanish Mackerel season, maybe not great certainly not a record but a good season. Brought some new people on the boat for Spanish like Chris and Adam, always good to have new friends meet. Scott and I go bottom fishing not for us but to take the kids and/or get some fish for our friends Ms Ava and Shirley. Took a friend of mine fishing with his two boys, it is always special to take a kid fishing, it really is the best part of fishing.

Ok a special report for Striper. Without a doubt this was the best year I have ever had fishing for stripers. I have learned a lot from going with Captain’s like Jack Fraizer on the Mystic Lady II and Ryan Rogers on the Midnight Sun. Also, i’m sure we are better prepared to have the correct baits, know more about the tactics necessary, have a better understanding of where to fish, know more about the sounder and birds to know what they are telling us about the fish. I believe also there is just more fish in the bay that are of legal size than I have ever seen so I don’t want to give myself more credit than I deserve. Without question it still takes a lot of things to go right in order to catch keepers. Had a lot of really great people on board and if you go through my blog entries for 2020 you will see them all mentioned. Is there a better way to quarantine than on a boat, nope at least not for me. 

Well 2020 will go down in history as devastating but I hope you have had a good year. For me personally it has been a good year, I have been at home working since Apr and we are having a good time together. Chuck and I were built for this pandemic as everything we need is right here in this little community and we are content with our lives. I have found and I pray you have found a series of hopeful events that will point you to the most hopeful thing I can steer you towards which is a faith in Christ. Once you understand you are not a mistake, you come from something wonderful, going to something wonderful, you realize that what you do and who you are matters.

Thanks for reading and if you got here I know you are a dear friend or I certainly hope we get to meet in the future. That may be a boat, at church, at our house or yours. Love you all. 

A special thanks to all of our volunteer organizations. Please contribute your time, talents, and/or money to these great groups where you feel as we are all the beneficiaries.

• Smith Point Sea Rescue
• Fairfields Volunteer Fire Department
• Northumberland county rescue squad
• Friends of the Northumberland County Animal Shelter
• Northumberland YoungLife & WyldLife or Here

Set out this morning with Scott, Pop Pop (Scott’s Father) and Charlie. Had to break ice this morning for at least the second time this year to get out of the creek. It was maybe only an ⅛ of an inch this morning but the other day it was measured at ⅜ so an improvement but is always crazy when it has been so warm this year. We left with intention of going to the old number one and red 62, saw some great big bait balls but nothing really hit. Got some intel from Mike and just looking out over the water and could tell everyone was going to the cut channel. I wish I had taken a picture of the boats when I got there but I doubt my phone could have told the story but I would bet it was at least 500 boats there. It looked like a Walmart parking lot on black Friday. 

We caught our limit again today and these fish continue to be just distended. I am not sure how many boats there caught their limit but we had a great time. Having Pop and Charlie on the boat is always great.

We have had such a great year and this was a great way to end the year. Tomorrow is going to be too rough to go out and I this point I need a break. I will see you next year. I do have an end of year review post going out so wake up early Jan 1 to read (Ok whenever you get around to it as it has been a very trying year and a great one at the same time.

Certainly one of the most prolific baits you can have in the water today is the old style bucktails. Having them in tandems may double your chances of catching. Size and Color combinations have everything to do with the success rates so try different combinations. I like some contrasting colors as well as matching. You just never know what day they will want white head/yellow bucktail or white head and white bucktail so they have plenty on hand. Also, if you want to run all day with little to no hang ups you need to create a spread. You create the spread for two reasons, one they wont get tangled and two you are fishing at two different depths which is a good idea as well.

Setup, I like to choose the leading weight based on where I want to place the rod in my four rod setup, heavier at the front so I can run it less behind the boat and then lighter weight out the back further back. Then off of a 3 way setup I tie or clip the lure. One very important thing to do is separate the length of line and weight of the two lures. I seperate the weight of the lure by at least an ounce. Even if you can’t have different weights the length of the line will help keep them apart. Keeping half the weight and twice the length back will keep the top one out of sight of the deeper one and you will never get them tangled and create two opportunities to catch. This is also true when pulling in the fish, the other lure is out of the way and unless the fish is fowl hooked and spinning you should not have a problem.

I don’t measure the line with anything other than the span of my arms (casual pull not full stretch, who would do that) but I would say 5 ft and 10 ft leaders. This will definitely get the heavier one well out of the way of the lighter one.

I had my good friend Brandon and his two boys Sage and Asher come up for the day. We had a later start than we hoped for but finally got off the dock in Mitch’s boat and headed to the NNK reef. Buddy and Todd were on our tail and they headed to 63a where Vince and Dave were already fishing. We saw nothing at the reef so we joined the fleet near Smith Point Lighthouse. It was slow going for a good bit of the day but we finally hooked one. Sage got it because he had just won a deciding game of rock paper scissors. Turned out it was a nice fish but not legal so we tossed him back. Got a big hit on the outside rig and it was Asher’s turn, he fought it into the boat just fine and Brandon netted him. This was a really fat 23 inch fish, they named him Fill short for Fillet. Got another short but followed that up with a 22 inch on a back rod. They had to work as a team to get that long line big weight and fish in the boat but yep he came in as well.

This is the best part of fishing for our group, we love taking kids out. These two were just great to have onboard. Very intrested in learning every aspect of how we fish and jumped in to help each other. They carried on a good conversation with two old men and Mitch and I really enjoyed the day.

One good thing they saw was how calm the water was when we left compared to how quickly the water changed and got a little rougher.

Today started out very foggy. I think it was better on the water than on the land but at this stage of my life I don’t dare risk any non-critical ventures. We stayed in port until 11:00 and waited until we were sure it was not going to get worse. The water was still maybe a foot swells at the worst, I guess if you have fog you are going to have mostly still air. The water was 46 and the air temp was very doable at about 55.

Fishing, we went to 63a just as planned. We did stop once when we saw a lot of boats at the old 1GW but for us it did not show enough life to make us leave our intended path, another good choice. When we got to 63 we saw two captains boats, one was just leaving so I did not get the name the other was the Heritage out of Reedville. He was just circling so I knew we were close. He likely just needed one more fish because he was gone very quickly. Anyway, we immediately started picking up some 19 – 21 inch fish but for us at this point in the season we kept throwing them back. We knew there were bigger fish in the area you just needed to put in the time. 

We ended up with a 25” and 23” and both were complete pigs. The stock this year has been really fat so obviously they are eating well. We had Vince our friend in his boat, he ended up with a very nice 23 and we came in together. All told we fished for about 2 hours and caught in the mid thirties for numbers (I wasn’t counting great as they were coming in quickly). 

We caught them on the same baits that have been working so well. I tried a chatterbait for the first time as my friend Mike just catches tons with them. For me that was the only bait that didn’t catch, obviously I need to go with him one time to see how he fishes it. He catches too many for it not to be a good bait. 

Today we did not catch limit, did not put one keeper in the boat. I am going to stay short of calling it a skunk because we caught 25 unders. Some of those were so close that if we had any guts (which I don’t) we could have argued with the game commission they were legal. Do you ever win that argument? Not enough times to risk the fine for me and we are not out meat hunting anyway. There is no fish more expensive than the one you catch as the saying goes so if you don’t go for fun and sportsmanship you are far better off not going.

Started the day off at about 7:30 on my dock and had the greatest of aspirations on filling the boat with 28s and above. Dreams diminished pretty quickly as there was just not a life on our sounder. We tried at our traditional spots and got a call that down at the disposal grounds there was a lot of activity. Well we did catch 25 and that is 25 more than most any boat in the parking lot so we have that. We had 4 friends out fishing in their boat and neither caught any. We do have our Purple Passion bait that catches 90% of our fish so if they didn’t have that and they didn’t have any fish just that simple. I don’t always know why some colors just turn them on some years but we have that one that I should just call reliable. 

We had about 10 captains boats around us all day and I am sure they either did not catch limit or they were way later than normal. I saw a few of them heading back at 3:00 which for them is just unheard of so I am not so underwhelmed with our performance. 

Finally, I know it was a late bite, our friend Shoddy did not catch hardly anything until about 4:00 and he said the whole bay came alive at one time and he ended up with 4 nice keepers. 

Well a combination that few find on a boat but for our Motley group it’s just another beautiful day on the water. We have now decided that combination dramatically improves our chances of fishing success. Such a great day yesterday I am writing this at 5:30 Monday morning because I stayed on the dock with Mitch and Basil talking about how this has been such a good season for us. Well there is really no doubt this has been a memorable season for at least our creek. 

Started the day off at church, I teach Sunday School with Luke the subject this month. Yes I know a long way from where I started my life but I really enjoy the class. I stay up front, in my mask so the closest person to me besides Chuck is about 20 feet away and those are distanced and masked. 

Went in Mitch’s boat to the Asphalt Pile which has been a traditional yearly favorite of ours but for whatever reason has just not been there this year. Got a call from Scott that he was doing better further north. He was with Dave and Kirk, that group caught a limit in maybe an hour or so. They were leaving as we got there but we could tell where they were so the hunt was on. We caught one about 21 but we knew there were some much bigger ones in the water so we had him go back and grow for next year. Got a 24 then a 25 and then a 26. I love the look of a rod when you just know it is going to be a nice size fish. 

No boating story is complete without a Basil treat and this log will not be the exception. Mitch has a very nice deck chair on board and with Basil being the Chairman of the Board he gets that chair. With the bigger fish I move the chair out of the way to give us a bit more room, is it absolutely needed no, but I don’t want that to be the reason we lose a fish. I do this every time and I also tell him every time, “Basil I am moving the chair out of your way so you can fight the fish better”. This has been going on for weeks but today Basil forgot and tried to sit where the chair “was”. My gosh he was up so fast his pants didn’t even get wet. If I thought he was that agile I would have been sitting in the chair, someone would have to have helped me up. Of course we laughed once we realized he was not hurt and he teased me that I pulled the chair from under him. That’s just one of the million reasons you take every opportunity to fish if Basil is on board. It will be memorable if you catch a fish or not.

The weather was about as good as a Dec day could be:

• Air Temp 56
• Water Temp 48
• Waves 0.5
• Water Very Clear

So it happens this way sometimes, everyone can go out at the same time and we have enough boats to make it happen. Today we had Mitch on his boat with Basil and Scott, Scott on his boat with Bubba, Kirk, Andrew and Vince on his boat with me as the mate. Today was cooler than first thought it may be mostly because the sun rarely poked through. Wave action was about 1.5 ft really all day. No birds were working or maybe just a few. Tides4fishing had it as a two fish day but the current and tide was working against us. The water had really cooled off to 47 deg. So we may not be at Charter level yet but we are really making good on a season of stripers. Everyone caught limit.

Fishing was not blistering but all 3 boats got their limit so could hardly be a better day for the Whay’s creek gang. I finally caught a keeper this year on a stretch 25, I have been fishing one for the last few times becuase its just out of the way and why not.

After a pretty long stretch (too long) we got Basil back in the boat for a day of fishing. We left the dock around 11:15 to head out to 59A. That is called “Leroy” for some reason which I don’t know but we all know where it is located. We almost stopped at the Asphalt pile because it had a lot of birds working but Mitch and I decided to stick to the plan. Good plan and we started working the rods at about 12:30. It was a little rough going out in 1.5 feet of swell directly into us but really no problem for his boat. A little slow for the first 30 min but we hung a nice 23 incher. We kept picking up a few 18” every so often and you could tell it was steadily picking up. More birds hitting the water the whole thing just started coming alive. Got our limit and came back to dock. 

Glad to have Basil back on board. Next week’s lesson kids will be how to net a fish. Basil has a swat the fly on a counter kind of action approach where he beats down on the fish, gets everything tangled and lifts it all in the boat. Well Basil it worked and “never lost a fish” Basil said we will fillet that one tonight. Luv ya buddy.

Today the water was 49.9 or below 50 for the first time. I feel really good about the rest of the season. Clear sky and the air temp was about 50.

Well at least it is new for me. Scott, Mitch, and I went out this morning to the asphalt pile caught a few unders nothing much to report there but in the mouth of the first fish we caught had this in his mouth. Water is now in the low 50s so I can’t explain why shrimp are here. This may not look like in the pic but it would at least be considered a large.