Saturday Fishing

[5th Tuition]

Now I remember why I try to fish the weekdays. With the wind we had in the later part of the week, my fishing buddy (Lou) was going through withdrawl. He called friday night and said winds were supposed to be "light and variable" on Sat. so lets try livelinning.
Because we are both retired, we usually fish weekdays. We launched from Sandy Point just before 7 am and caught spot on bridge piling #10. Spot were perfect size!!!! Did I mention the winds were supposed to be light?
After we filled the livewell, we searched for a piling that was not anchored up by another boat. Nothing on the western side, so we headed to the eastern side. While it was lighter traffic, most pilings were taken, or people were hoping from one to another.
We anchored on one of my favorite pilings, but didn't even get a runoff. Wind (did I mention it was supposed to be light) and tide were together, so it should have been good fishing. I figured with all the traffic running past pilings, it had spooked the fish. We saw birds working just south of the bridge and tried to drift a couple spot through them. No hookups, saw lots of small bait fish (silversides, glassminnows) breaking the surface and gulls diving on them; but nothing underneath feeding.
Off to Hacketts. Found the edge where water drops off from 18 ft to 30 ft quickly. Anchored up in 26 ft (dropoff) and began to feed spot to the blues. We tried to use weight to get below them, but the blues found them anyway. I had a couple nice fish cut the leader, so "when in Rome". We cut up a few spot and started catching blues. We called a friend over to get in on the action, and as soon as he anchored, the bite slowed. We still picked up a few more blues, but no more instant hits, as before.
We decided to quit around noon, and we gave the rest of our spot to a fellow fisherman who was on his way out of SP. He thanked us and we wished him luck.
We loaded the boat and laughed at some of the actions at the ramp. Lots of boats were being pulled around 1 pm and the antics were comical. Another reason to avoid weekends if possible.
Looking forward to to next week. The water temps are dropping (74*) and it's cool enough to stay on the water longer (during the summer we were calling it quits around 9:30 - 10:00 am because of the heat).
I'll try hitting the triple bouy/rock hall area hard in the coming weeks with my boat (slipped in bodkin creek), and we will be hitting the west river area in my buddies boat.
There was a tournament out of Rock Hall today, I'll be looking for reports!!
5th (Marty)