Great pictures; just what the doctor ordered for a cold winter day!
I too have run afould of the "trouble hooks" except that mine went through my thumb and into the bone. Garlien and I tried for hours to extract it, and 6 beers and 8 Motrin later we finally gave up.
We cut it off at the skin and the rest of the hook is still in my hand.
...Just kidding.....I went to the nighttime doc place and they took it out. But my ending sounds way cooler than reality.
Thanks for the comments guys, it is kinda fun looking back over the past year - it went by awful fast!
I am very fortunate for the help I have received over the past couple of years from some very good fisherman and charter captains. I'm also grateful for the opportunity to get out as much as I have. This real job BS is gonna suck! They actually have the audacity to expect me to show up five days a week!
July didn't start off the way I planned. Somewhere around the 1st of July I got poked by a fish. This Mr. Carter character warned me to watch it closely and sure enough I spent a week in Bethesda with a Staph infection. I blame him!
I got a lot of calls, texts and cards but I never expected to get a fruit basket from a bar....Gotta love the Happy Harbor...it made my day to say the least.
After I got out of the hospital I went and got my boat back from Bill Judge and got to use it as well as some fun fishing with Capt John and Mr. Carter on the Patent Pending.
Worked a trip with Capt Kenny on the Janet M and took Capt Kenny of the Miss Margret and his son and nephew out for some live lining.
Ended the month wearing them out north of Poplar...this was the best live lining I have seen in my limited time fishing the bay.
As I already mentioned, when fun fishing on my boat, I usually just back into an empty slip at the Harbor to clean the fish and have them cooked up right then and there...it's hard to beat a platter of fried and blackened Rockfish that were swimming just hours before.
I'll post August, September and November's pics a little later.
A lot of Live Lining, what can I say, it was good. So good, we sometimes spent more time at the Harbor after the trip than we actually did fishing.
I mentioned earlier that the new owners of the Harbor have bands on the Dock Bar in the summer. The problem is that if you don't get there early, it's hard to get a table for a large group. We figured out that if we just moved Shawn's big boat into the transient slip adjacent to the Dock Bar, we had our own, front row box seats...pretty sneaky huh!
In addition to fishing my boat, I also filled in for this Mr. Carpenter character on the Patent Pending and worked on the Valerie Ann.
My fishing definitely started slowing down in the fall. I had my retirement from Uncle Sam's Canoe Club to get wrapped up, my wife had this crazy idea that I needed to find a job after I retired and I wanted to get my Captains License before I started a new job and couldn't get the time off.
Anyhow, we live lined at least once a week until the spot thinned out. Took the owner of the Happy Harbor out live lining ... he let it slipped he had never done it before so we literally kidnapped him off the dock one Sunday morning and took him out. Always good to have the bar owners as a friend.
A friend put his Hook & Line license on my boat and we went out one afternoon and did okay - couple hundred pounds. It was fun, but a lot of work. I still don't understand how we managed to get blood on the cabin ceiling...it looked like Charlie Manson had been on the boat by the time we were done.
Had a couple of decent days trolling in November but we didn't set the world on fire by any means. Additionally, I worked for John for his last few trips filling in for Marty, excuse me, Mr. Carter.
That cold front with the strong West wind blew all the water out of the creek (see the pic) and I can't help but think that had something to do with the resident fish shutting down.
Last few times out were nothing more than boat rides to lunch at Knapps Narrows or to the Fleet Reserve Club downtown Annapolis. Pulled the boat in early Dec, had Prestige Yachts of Annapolis come out and wash it and shrink wrap it for the winter.
Just out of tradition, Capt Brian ran his boat down to Cove Point on 15 December, just hoping to close the season out on a high note - it wasn't to be. 27 rods and not a touch all day.
In late December my 50 Ton Masters License came through and I went to DNR and picked up a resident guide license.
Looking forward to 2014...hope to see ya'll at some of the winter fishing shows, if not, I'll see ya on the water come April.
Hybrid Mode
