Launched at 6:30 from SPSP with my brother-in-law Chris and his brother Steve. Headed straight down the channel looking for some decent marks. First good marks started at Brickhouse Bar area, on the west side. Only had a few of the planer rods out when one of them goes down. It was back only 50', a tandem rig. A 37" rock hit a top bait which was a chute with a 6" shad. Finally got out the entire spread and had worked a little further south of Brickhouse. We were just below the deep hole working toward the east. We were in 90' of water when a deep umbrella starts screaming, shortly thereafter an umbrella back 200' with no weight starts screaming, shortly thereafter a planer rod back 150' and deep starts screaming. Holy chit, 3 rods had snagged something; no flags or floats anywhere and we were in 90 feet of water. Approx location was 38.54.7 & 76.23.13. Well that put a big hole in the spread and provided some local net fisherman about $100 worth of tackle. Took awhile to get over the being pissed phased, but got the planer rod re-rigged and back in operation and threw over a dummy line to handle the deep position. Heard everyone else catching in our area, but couldn't buy another bite as the current went slack.
There was a ton of boats down in the BP area, but not as many up in the channel area near TPL. We decided to chase the current south and as we did most of the boats around BPL started trolling north to the TPL area. The talk on the radio had indicated the TPL area was hotter than BPL and I guess that was the draw
. We worked down to the BPL and found the area had pretty much cleared out and waited for the tide to turn. When it did we found a bunch of birds sitting and no other boats around. So we decided to find out what was below them. Sure enough, bait and fish. First pass through we picked up a 39" on the re-rigged planner rod. I did the best to keep the rod being reeling back near the console so as not to attract attention and didn't use a net to land the fish. Second pass we hooked up another 39" fish, which hit a planer rod, and again we tried to not attract attention, but as careful as we were, others were watching. Third pass through had us fighting for position to get at OUR DAMN fish. We already had our limit of overs in the box, so now we were basically C&R and hoping for some unders. Our third and final pass ended up being a cluster f%$#ing mess. A planer line back 150' explodes and moved nicely to the back. As we are reeling it in, the WWB rigged with a 2/6 tandem goes down. Don't you know it, they crossed. What a mess, but it was worth it. The planer line had caught a 27", an under, and the WWB had caught a fat 42" hog, which was quickly measured and released. We decided to get the hell out of dodge as every boat within eyesight made a beeline for our find. We trolled slowly north a little bit more and decided to call it a day and head for the ramp. It had been a good day: 39, 39, 37 & 27 on ice and a 42" fish released....Don
Chris with his 39" fish:
Steve with his 39" fish:
