Hot and Testy

[5th Tuition]

Is it ever too hot to fish? Well today came close. Yesterday, Lou and I fished with Don (Hunter) and we had a great day. We turned 25 spot into 6 nice fish (three over and three under).

Today, I had a friend who came down from Hancock Maryland to fish with me. I was really nervous about finding spot for today. I headed back to where Don was successful yesterday and began to drift with the slowing outgoing tide. As soon as we had three in quick succession, I threw out the marker, motored back uptide and anchored quickly.
Spot were coming over the gunnel in quick fashion. Soon, we had 15 spot in the livewell and that's about all mine can keep alive and frisky. My friend from Hancock (Bruce) caught a double and Lou got another single before I pulled anchor. 18 in the well.
We raced to the bridge and found the current still outflowing. I quickly anchored and with just enough current, we picked up two nice fish.
The current died and we hopped a few pilings wasting spot. When the tide started in, we moved to the other side of the piling and anchored up. With only a few spot left, we decided to eat some food and drink some cold drinks and wait for the current to really move before we dunked our final spot. I watched Mark (Mlag) and Skip (27 Sailfish) to see when they started using their nets. I called Mark and asked him if they were catching and he said "yes". I told him we only had a few spot left and didn't want to waste them too soon. I put away my rod so my friend could fish more of the remaining spot.
We were anchored up perfectly, only about 25-30 feet away from the piling. Bruce kept throwing his spot up past the piling and along side of it. He would "launch" it 50 ft and it would splash with a thud. After about 2 minutes, he would say it wasn't very frisky anymore. It was HOT and we were running out of bait; so I told him (in probably not the friendliest voice), "the next spot you get out of the livewell, hit him over the head with the mallet first before putting him on the hook". He said, What? I said you don't need to throw them and "stun" them, just pitch him behind the motor and let him swim for the piling. He did, and caught a nice fish for the box.
Lou put another fish or two in the box and we were down to our last spot. Bruce put it on his rod, pitched it back behind the motor, sat the rod in the rodholder, and lit a cigerette. I said, that's our last spot and you better hold that rod, any tension and the rock might drop the bait. We had a runoff butt didn't hookup.
Mark (Mlag) called and asked if we had out last fish yet. I told him we were out of spot and he dropped off 5 of his leftovers (thanks Mark). He knew I was trying to get a limit for Bruce to take back to Hancock. With the extra spot, we picked up another fish and had a couple more runnoffs. That's fishing. At least we had our chances to limit out. Bruce wasn't as well versed in livelinning and we gave him most of the chances to catch. Lou and I can get out anytime.
So with one short of our limit, we ran back to SP and the breeze felt great in our faces. Back on shore, the asphalt parking lot was a b1tch. The airconditioned ride home felt great, and the slurpy from 7eleven was to die for.
Bruce left my house with all of todays fish filleted and three of yesterdays fish filleted. He should have a great fish fry in Hancock.

A special thanks to Don for taking Lou and I out yesterday for a refresher course on Livelinning; and to Mark for sharing his bait when it was desperately needed. And. although Lou still lives in the dark ages (no answering machine, no cell phone, and no computer to read this post, a thank you for going with me today in this hot weather to try to put Bruce on some fish. I know Lou would have rather stayed in the airconditioning at home, but he sweated his butt off today catching 4 of the 5 fish so Bruce would have something to take home.

I'm headed for a nappypoo;
5th (Marty)