I frequently fish solo, but prefer not to on opening day, for obvious reasons. I have 2 regular fishing buddies, and either one or both of them normally fish with me on opening day. I knew one guy couldn't this year, and the other one bailed at the last minute
So although I didn't want to, I went it alone today.
The plan was to get out very early, run my full spread (autopilot is a must for me), and hope to snag one early before the masses converged. Started setting my 14 rod spread about 6:15, and once I got the 10th line set, all hell broke loose. Clips started popping and drags started singing
Several lines went off at once, and it was time to get busy. I landed the first one, slipped it into the cooler, and proceeded to one at a time, land and safely release another 5. Two of the rods with tandems, had fish on both baits!
I was pretty well "wooped" by then, so I took a couple of minutes to catch my breathe before clearing the deck.
Before I could clear the mess from the deck, 2 more lines go down, and then a 3rd. Safely release those 3, and I'm praying that the 3 rods still in the water don't get hit.
No fish pictures until I got back to the dock, but I did take a picture of the mess before I cleaned up. 7 rods and a total of 9 fish. Luckily no rods were broken during the chaos. By the way, this picture was taken at 7:20am......That Was FUN!
