Scott; we didn't even have lines in the water near Love Point. We trolled a little while near the mouth of the West River looking for birds or bait. If we had found a concentration of fish, we were going to pull in the trolling lines and jig them.
We spent soooo much time in Eastern Bay chasing birds that we spent toooo much time there. Eventually, we would run up on a group of birds, look for the size of the fish breaking and slowly motor through the group watching the downscan for better fish on the bottom
. Unfortunately, everything looked small in the schools.
The run around Kent Island was two fold, one, I had never done it before, second, I wanted to charge the batteries really well for the coming cold snap. Best news was not a single bluefish in all the rock.
By the time we hit the love point area, it was nearing dark and Lou wanted to get in. One very important thing to report
. I always had a problem with my running lights for several years. The bulbs would only last a couple hours before going bad. Now when I say bad, they would not break the filament. The bulb would actually turn black. I always carried spares to replace all the time. Last year, I was told to buy some dielectric grease and put on the bulb. I bought something similar and greased the tips of the "Festoon" bulbs and have not had a problem since
.
The downscan showed lots of bait near Love Point light as we were running in that area, but didn't have time to stop.
A p.s. to the above post. I love my down/side scan unit. When I have my fishfinder application on, the reading while running is crap. My screen goes virtually white. I still get bottom reading, but bait or fish are nearly impossible to distinguish. If I run over a large bait ball at 20 mph I may get a vertical line about 1/8 or 1/4 inch wide that I could reverse direction and slow down and at trolling speed go back and look at the bait for fish mixed in.
The downscan transducer is mounted lower on the hull and I don't know if that's the reason, or if it's just a benifit of the downscan mode that allows me to run (20 mph) and actually see bait balls as bait balls. Now, the bait ball is reduced in size because of going over it at speed, but it still shows a much improved picture on the screen. In downscan mode, I can actually tell what knd of bait is in the ball!!!! Rainminnows and menhaden look totally different in size and menhaden "light up" much darker. Those of you who don't have down/side scan will think I'm lying, but you can actually COUNT the number of menhaden in a school (if you were willing to do the screen capture and look at it later).
I have not perfected the sidescan portion of the unit as I don't use it very often. This fall, if the big fish come up the bay, I may try to use sidescan when trolling so I can see what side of the boat the fish are on. Of all the things I've added to the boat, this has to be the best and most productive thing for the money (around 600 bucks).
Now I need some gannets to show me where to begin looking for big menhaden/big fish. I understand they have not yet turned into the Chesapeake, but big fish are on the way
.
5th (Marty)