B-Mo in the Cabin.
Greg rocking it waterman style, where orange PVC is the right choice for any occasion.
Fifteen days without rockfishing during the fall season can seem like an eternity, or it can slip past you without really noticing - its been a little of both for me. I've been insanely busy at work during the day, then at night and I come home to work on the 31 or 32
paintings that I have going at once ( ranging in size from 12 to 48" high), the steady stream of applications for grants and art exhibitions, making the rounds to a few gallery openings, or discuss wedding preparations with Rochelle. Thinking about fishing always seems to jump in at the wrong time, there is always something to do, and some other place I have to be . Sunday I found myself heading out with some pals in pursuit of big Rockfish, the "Hogs" as the are Known in Gloucester, which come into the bay from the Atlantic as it gets cooler.
We had a gentlemen's hours on Sunday, due to strong lunar tides and steady south winds keeping the tides 3-4 below normal. We waited about and hour and a half after a scheduled late start, and Greg looked like he needed all of that time, as apparently he had a late night in Williamsburg on Saturday, after limiting out with his friend Will on schoolies in a honey hole across the river (they did a repeat of our previous
cbbt trip trolling for hogs to no avail).
With the low tides, we had to bank everything on one tide, deading out and back before the tide dropped so low, the Parker (soon to be officially named "Lawdy Be") would be sitting on the sand (the previous, day Greg had to jump out of the boat into 48 degree water in his jeans and pull the boat the last few yards, all one ton of her, notice he went to a bar instead of the hospital - this guy thinks he is hypothermia proof).
Our late start out to York spit reef and York spit light, but we saw no dive-bombing birds, no schoolie Hogs, so we high tailed it to a few honey holes and caught them up on topwater lures. Greg landed two on a bucktail I had tied and given to him. He was getting a ton of bites, and and fished with it for less than ten minutes before he had hooked into a nice chainlink fence, 10 feet up on a peir. Of course it was a prototype, so thanks Greg - back to the drawing board with that one. Brad caught his first topwater Rockfish, landing two, but they were under size, or too close to call, and since we didn't have a ruler just returned them to the current. I managed to catch five fishing slug-gos subsurface and topwater. All of the fish were fat and healthy, with a few in the maybe range. No ruler, no keeping fish that aren't clearly keepers using my forearm test.
We had a blast all day with an almost steady strem of laughter - it was great, but for better or for worse, no "hogs", no blitzing fish and birds. Perhaps that is reason, myself and a few of my friends will most likely find ourselves on the very same boat in the last days of this year, freezing our asses off in 25 degreeg weather with 10-15 mile and hour winds, laughing our asses off, having a great time, and for a few minutes out of the day, catching rocks.
Perrin Islands in the distance. Sunday, all water, no big fish.
Greg and Will's Rockfish from Saturday, the Captain was nice enough to let Brad and I spit these porker schoolies, since we didn't keep any of the 10 we caught between us.
Ok - I'm hard core - after barely getting the boat in - we all split, and as I drove across the bridge with the sun setting, I just had to stop. I parked under the bridge, grabbed my rod and headed for the rocks, but there was nothing biting or breaking the surface, so instead, I got the obligatory sunset-lit (sometimes, sun-rise) shot. Greg and blair - I know you will laugh at me for stopping off - but really - it just shows how hardore I am. Fish on.
I headed out to the Shenandoah Valley yesterday morning to meet up with my buddy Mike to do a little trout fishing, and we had tons of action on a warm January day. We caught all of the fish on small panther martin spinners - I was using my ultra-light rod and it was a ton of fun. There were tons of people fishing the deep holes on this creek - so we hoofed it up stream to fish any structure we found in the more shallow runs and little holes here and there. Within my first 15 casts I hooked in to a fish (which is so much more fun because they are only 10 or 15 feet away, and sometimes almost at your feet) but lost it before I got it to the net. Two casts later, I had my first Brown Trout ever in the net - good fight!
As you can see by the cooler of Browns and Rainbows, we had a great morning (we fished from about 8am until 11:30am) as I said earlier. There were a ton of trout - I was getting hook ups back to back sometimes (but I lost 7 or 8 fish), and I went for no more than 10-15 minutes between hits. Drift-fishing for floundercan be tricky, but I have learned that trout can be just as hard or harder to get from strike into the net. It was great because I could see every hit and the trout just seemed to materialize from nowhere - an extremely fun way to fish. I can't wait to do some more of this kind of fishing.
We headed back to Mikes place and decided to smoke some of the trout for lunch - that's Dakota in the lower left hand corner - waiting for me to give her a trout - no dice girl.
This is Mike homemade smoker - it works well!
Mike stoking the smoker - Oh man were those trout good!
