trolling 10/5 mid bay

[5th Tuition]

Allen (justchillin) has not been out fishing since the spring trophy season. He spends all of his free time commercially catching crabs during the summer. Lou and I talked him into taking a day off and going out of Ches. Beach today.

Capt. John and I have been working breaking fish and diving birds anywhere between Deale and the false channel. Fish may erupt at any time, all day long.

Soooooo, we took a leisurly (sp) trek down to Ches Beach and launched around 8:30 am. High tide was 10:30 at Plum Point, so we had both sides of a moving tide to fish today.

As we left the Ches Beach channel, Allen was checking out the starboard side looking for birds (we left the binoculars home). We passed the last green marker from Ches Beach and I saw a bunch of "liar" birds (small terns) on the port side. I said "Allen, any birds on our right?", "Not yet" he said. I said, "Look to your left". Allen said, "Holy s__t".

I swung toward them and watched the downscan (I love it) only to see small bait and maybe some small fish. Nothing to get excited about. I told him, if birds are flying, we will find better marks soon.

Wind was from the wnw at about 10-12 and the waves built as they crossed the bay. We were running with them, so it wasn't too bad getting across in my 22 ft WA. Once on the eastern side, we found birds everywhere. We could litterally troll from one breaking pod to another for miles.

We started with five spreader bars with Capt. John spoons. We quickly reduced our spread to only four rods (two for Lou, two for Allen). They had a hard time keeping their two rods in the water. I just chuckled from the helm at the mayhem behind me.

Luckily, Allen said he wanted to keep some blues today. Small rock (16 inches) and smoker blues (12-16 inches) were everywhere. We decided to only keep the bigger blues, and he wound up with 9 nice ones before saying that was all he wanted today.

We caught only two rock (23-25 inches), but I believe my speed was a determining factor. The waves were so narly, that I had trouble keeping my speed down. If I tried to stay around 3.5 (or anywhere in the 3's), I soon found my speed in the 2's because of heading into waves on a turn. I was forced to troll in the 4's to keep the helm manuverable. Blues love spoons trolled in the 4's. We could have loaded the cooler with blues!!!

As the day went on, the winds subsided, but the birds left us. We found a few more fish near 80A to keep the day interesting, but no keeper rock. Many of the fish were in 17-20 ft (crabpot depth), so we had to keep a sharp lookout.

All in all, not a bad day. Lots of action (probably 25-30 rock and 50-75 blues). Lou was tired and beat when we returned to Ches Beach, so he wants tomorrow off and back to fishing on his boat on Friday. Allen wants to take his boat on Monday (Columbus Day for State employees). So everyone must have had a good time.

I would have liked to have seen more keeper rock, but hey, maybe next time.
5th (Marty)