Beautiful day on the Chesapeake.

[PhilK999]

After a week and a half of cleaning, polishing, waxing and organizing the boat, Ed and I left the pier about 7:45 this morning for a shake down cruise and short fishing trip. This was the first time I have targeted trophies on my boat in about 2-3 years. Took both planers, 6 rods and 8 barbless lures. Ran 5 off the planers: 2 rods rigged with single parachutes, 1 with a parachute behind an umbrella, 1 a tandem bucktail, 1 a tandem bucktail paracute and a 21 tony for speed off the boat. All were green of white and shads from 6" to 12".

It was a great day, 5-10 out of the west, less than 1' waves, very little boat traffic, even the sailboats were well behaved and decent chatter on the radio. You could even troll east west without dodging everyone. You needed a jacket in the morning, but after noon it was t-shirt and shorts time. Crystal clear skies, what you really want for your first day on the bay after the winter we had. Even got to listen to the O's even though they can't hold a lead to save their life right now.

We started off over at Matapeake and trolled back and orth across the bay, finding very little bait but managed 3 fish, the biggest was about 38, took a photo of each fish in the water and all were released without picking the fish up. First fish was on a green parachute 6" shad behind a 4 arm umbrella back 40 feet of the end of the board, , second fish was the tandem parachute 5 oz white chute with 9" whtie shad, last fish was a tandem bucktail, 2oz green BFG with a 9" shad.

Pulled the rods about 2:30 or so and headed home. Nice first day of what I hope is a great 2010 fishing season. My boat will sit in the slip until about May 8th when all the craziness is over, but I will be on 2 charters the first two weekends.