Thanks for introducing us to this event, Bruce... we all really enjoyed it! Before we left the boys asked if we could do it again next year. We also did the Annapolis Police Camp and Wish A Fish for first time this year. Such a joy to see the boys' empathy for our guests and watch the enjoyment they get from teaching and entertaining our guests.
The ride up to Middle River was very rough with 2-3 footers... thankfully we had a following sea. Bruce greeted us at the dock and we went in for donuts and met our guests. With an eye on the sky and the radar we headed out shortly after 9am and were told to stay close to port as there was a line of storms coming. 5 minutes out we got on edge of a shoal and dropped 4 lines with bloodworms (Thanks to Bruce for providing). We quickly got into the school of massive upper bay perch and our athletes were ecstatic to be pulling up perch sometimes 2 at a time. OK, they weren't actually massive, but tiny would be more appropriate... 3-6.5". I have never seen such small perch! Fortunately Robin insisted that we keep them anyway... we didn't see other boats catching anything (maybe they were using the provided nightcrawlers, dunno) and she wanted to make sure we weren't throwing back the winning fish! So into the live well they went. After about an hour of fishing, with lightning on the horizon the call came for all boats to head in. We got tied up, took some photos, and got our guests off the boat before the sky opened up. My boys pulled the perch out of the live well and put them in a little bucket and took the live perch for weigh-in. Each of our athletes had caught a 6.5" perch that weighed in at 0.15 pounds each and to their joy, that was good enough to earn them tie for 7th place and some nice trophies! After a nice lunch and DJ and dancing, they gave out the trophies and we headed home across much calmer seas than the trip up! It was interesting exploring the upper bay on the ride home and looking for some fish to drop spot on, but never found any action until we got to Bay Bridge, and jigged just a single 21 incher and then went for a swim off the boat close to home, ate dinner, and headed in after a great day.
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