I put the boat in the wet slip (a month and a half late) yesterday. We decided to fish her EARLY this morning. We met at the slip at 5 am. Boy was it dark. Made my way out of the Bodkin with the help of years of experience, and the new hds 7 gps. I wish there was a way to see crab pot floats in the dark
. Luckily, we made it to the channel and headed south. Our destination was the triple bouys off the chester river. I ducked down opposite the Gibson Island causeway in the dark and turned east toward the chester river.
When we hit the eastern shore channel, it was light enough to drop lines and troll north. I saw one tug and one sailboat besides us out there. No luck for us early. As we trolled (15 tonys) we began to see more charters. Most appeared to be looking for spanish. They trolled a very limited number of rods (4-6) and were moving at a fast clip. We joined the fleet, but we were looking for rock and only moving at 3.5 mph. As the charters bore down on us, I felt like I was in an old WWII movie with destroyers in a search pattern for german subs. I could almost hear the woop, woop, woop and the call for "battle stations" from the captains. We stayed long enough to watch to see if anyone was doing any good. We saw no fish caught.
As I turned back toward the tripples, we picked up a single 15 inch blue. A few minutes later, an undersize rock, our last fish (another 15 inch blue) was picked up not too much later.
Not a good day, but enough to get us to try again. I've been fishing south of the bridge with friends and now I have to locate the fish above the bridge. I was surprised to only pick up single blues. Most of the time several rods go down when the blues are around.
I'll keep at it, and try to catch some spot for livelinning. I have a few places I want to try just before dark.
5th (Marty)