In search of huge flatheads...

Matt "The Catfish Cowboy" and I are going after these guys tomorrow (Friday, July 20) and our plan is to catch something like this bad picture of a big flathead I caught two years ago with Matt - we haven't gotten out to fish our spot since then - wish us luck - pictures will follow. I hope to get a video if we hook into a biggun!

Outer Banks and Mixed bag Chesapeake

Rochelle and I went to the outer banks with my brothers family and my Mom. We had a greta time, but I will leave most of them out of the pictures. I fished early mornings 5 of the six days, the first one, spent fishing cut bait, was uneventful, but beautiful.The next morning I went light, taking off an hour before first light, looking for surface action, I walked 4-5 miles total and soaked up scenes at least as beautiful as this for hours, I cast for a while around a pier, but got nothing, so I hiked back. Later that day I caught two little bluefish off the beach flipping a kastmaster while taking a break from soaking up sun with Rochelle on the beach.
The next morning I was at Avalon Pier an hour before sunrise, and after a little fumbling I learned to work a gotcha lure from the pier - 10 13-16 inch bluefish and I was back by 10 am. Great morning, but the word on the pier was that the day before they were pulling in 18+ inch blues and Spanish mackerel 15-22 inches. A day late and a dollar short, but a hell of a fun morning.
My bro Dan was convinced and we went back to the pier the next morning on my birthday, the fishing was slower, but we had fun, Dan caught his first bluefish, along with 3 or so more, but the fish were small. I caught two under 10 inches, then landed a feisty 14 incher.
I headed back to Gloucester the next weekend to meet up with the guys and get fitted for the tuxes. Greg ended up being the only one that was able to do it. But Friday night I hung out with my parents and my brother's huge low-slung deck he just built. Dan also bought a trampoline "for his kids". We had to practice our front flips. I landed this one perfectly.

Dan looks scared. but actually almost landed it.
Drifting the CBBT with Greg after trying to catch spadefish (I caught a little one) and then losing the wreck anchor when we were trying to pull up. We caught about ten flounder here, but all were 16-18.25 and we were running out of minnows - Greg had yet to catch a keeper (even thought he's cought at least 50 or more flounder this year).
Ha ha - I landed the first fish over 18.5 - this was almost 19, ON MY LAST MINNOW.



That night after hitting the crab deck we hit our favorite docks for some catch and release rockfishing - there were just a few, but the were hitting the surface hard spradically - we caught 8-10 in 2 hours, but all were over 18 (and returned to the water). Each of us caught a 20 incher like this one greg has - violent hits!
Sunday afternoon we fished the York river in front of Greg's and caught a 6 or seven flounder and a pile of croakers, and the Captain finally caught this keeper flounder -his first of the year. On another note, I picked up a 3.3 hp mercury to put on my flatbottom at my parents - I plan on catching some puppydrum this summer - more to come later when I get some days off - fish on.

Captain Greg and John the "Rockfish Slayer" back in action on the York River

It had been a long time since I had fished, due to buying a new place and doing a ton of light renovations (still working on it), moving (still unpacking), the wedding (we now have rings and a honeymoon planned) all while Rochelle's Dad was diagnosed with Brain Cancer - its been a hell of a year. But I did get to get out on a windy but very productive day in the skiff with the captain on Saturday June 2.We nailed the flounder off of Yorktown - 12 in about 2.5 hours first thing in the morning, but due to the new 18.5 length requirements, none were keepers (4 made last year's 18" mark) most between 16.5 and 18.33 inches. But it was a blast - the captain showed me up - he caught 10 of the 12, including the first double flounder catch either of us had ever seen ([pictured above). Mean while I had the first jumper flounder I've ever seen as it threw the hook - it cleared the water by 3 feet!

ITS THE ALLEN ISLANDS SEA MONSTER!

Naw, it was just the captain raking clams for our lunch - we took turns raking and got about 3 dozen clams in an hour or so. I had a blast raking for clams for the first time. Greg pulled a genius move and poked himself in the head with the rake. I was snoozing on deck when Greg started panicking... "Hey man - do I have a hole in my head?" I laughed and told him he needed help because noon was way too early to be that drunk, but I soon realized from his panic he was serious, and I looked and sure enough, he had a nice 1/4" round hole on top of his bald noggin. Luckily, his tetanus shot was current... We fished for trout with soft plastic jigs in the worsening wind conditions over the exposed grass beds, but I landed the only fish - a croaker.

York river clam bake on the grill - hell yeah.

Now this is what I call a shore lunch - fresh crabs from Greg's pots and a ton of York river clams.
After some chillin at the Yacht Haven Crabdeck that evening, we went out looking for top-water for striper at 10:30pm around our favorite docks and NAILED them. We caught 20+ rockfish and some snapper-sized blues. It was time for me to catch up with Greg and so I lived up to my namesake, catching at least 15 of the fish that night, in about 2 hours all on soft plastic topwater. It was incredible, I went through a whole 10 pack of 7" slug-gos! We got 4 keeper rocks and 3 blue fish, including the 20+" rock and 16.5" bluefish pictured above (yeah, we were lazy and cleaned them in the morning).

Here is our cooler - a great day of late spring fishing. I'll be in the outer banks next week, so hopefully I can do a little fishing there, depends on if I get a hold of Jason West....
Tight lines!

Boiling rockfish...

Dudes, I've only witnessed two other times fishing the docks at Amoco and this one by far was THE most active rockfish feeding frenzy I've ever seen! The rock were so thick you could have walked on their backs! I must have had 10 fish that night with the biggest being about 10". It's incredible to see these fish chase bait from the depths up and outta the water to splash:

After work rock...

Waited til' dark and headed out knowing I would catch some but NOT in such a short amount of time! Caught 2 keepers in less than 10 minutes... no shit here. Landed a total of 7 with 1 hour before peak low tide with the wind blowing against it. Kinda made the boat just sit there in front of the Amoco docks that we always catch em at. These 2 came outta the corner and the rest were caught on the side dock.

Spring fishing out on the bay!

Well, this season is getting off to a great start. Here's some fish:

Here's the first night of rock season.	Another night of rock fishing with Bob ;-D
Great set of blues caught at York spit light tower. These guys pulled harder than 25" rockfish!	Nasty little rock with lesions. Makes me sad and angry in that disease in these fish is primarily caused by human factors! Dumb ass rednecks with chem-lawns...
Lastly, another shot of one of the blues above.

Come on Brad, Emily will be jealous

Haha, I made Brad hold the fish. I figured that since Brad only got a few bites with no hookups that it wouldn't be a bad thing if he held MY fish! Hahaha, sorry Brad! - Capt. Greg

Lucky bastards - I miss fishing and hanging out! Soon the condo will be done, I've done a ton of work and will update that blog soon visit here
Brad i hope that french kiss on the rockfish brings good luck when I get up there. Greg keeps texting me these photos and it is driving me nuts (but don't stop sending them). See you guys soon enough.

Sea Gal

Here's a great trip Angus, Harold, and I went on to take both Angus and Alice's boat the Sea Gal from Norfolk harbor up to Reedville VA for a rail hauling that includes bottom painting and repairs. Seas were a nice 2-3' with winds 10-15kts sustained. She's a GREAT riding boat and one of kind that you just don't see to much of on the bay anymore. She was built in Reedville in 1960(?) by a local boat builder. All three of us took turns at the helm throughout the 8hr trip:

Greg needs a digital camera

Ok Greg - this is the best I can do with photoshop. The image you text me was so dark i could tell what or how big it was - I thought it was a flounder. Dude- you can get an ok point and shoot camera for 100 bucks and a pretty darn good one for under 300. Think about it - you have too many fishing adventures that go unshared because of the cell phone camera.

Man, night pics with a freakin cell phone SUCK! At any rate, I took my neighbor Davy out this evening and we caught 6 rockfish with 3 of em around 18"! With the first cast I had a bite and the second cast landed a fat 18". It was FUN...

Additional Cranberry Photo

This was my third backpacking trip to Cranberry Wilderness (but the first time fishing there). Every time we go, we take a photo in front of this bush at Aaron's right before hopping in the car. The reason Aaron and I look so excited is because his 5 year old Daughter was taking the photo, and it took her nearly 5 minutes to find the shutter release! When she shot it, she went into rapid fire mode and I guess this was a secondary shot. Left to right - Jason Walker, Mike Brandt, Sean Flaherty, Myself, and Aaron Coleman. Photo courtesy of Maya Coleman.

On another note - Captain Greg needs to create some posts of his recent trips - did you take pictures of any of those sharks you caught while flounder fishing last weekend?

In the woods - Cranberry Wildnerness

Cranberry was as beautiful as ever, well almost. Its a wet place, tons of moss, and so it does get its share of moistures, so it rain, rained, and rained some more. It was wet for more than half the trip, but we made the best of it and got some good weather too. Here is a nice shot between our second campsite and what became my favorite fishing hole of the trip.
A down stream shot of the lower end of my favorite hole on a sunny Tuesday. I can't count how many times I saw the flashes of large trout chasing my spinner, and every once in awhile I would catch one.
This is the upper end of my favorite hole, its early as you can tell by the shadow of the mountain.
Campsite 1: We arrived at the crowded cranberry parking lot about 4, much later than I hoped. We had stopped at Aaron's in Lewisberg, WV to stretch our legs as well as catch up with Aaron, and Jason Walker. Sean, Mike and I strapped on our over sized packs, loaded with fishing gear and our affects, and hiked as fast as we could to our campsite, many people were on their way out, but the first few campsites were occupied. It was a long 3 or 4 miles. We arrived at a comfortable camp complete with a rustic fireside bench around 5:15, set up camp quickly and Mike and I were fishing by 5:35. Here is our first camp.
The pressure was on to catch dinner before dark, Everyone wanted fish for dinner. Within 15 minutes I had landed my first wild brookie! It was gorgeous, with red spots and orange fins, so cool! the only problem was, he was only about 4 inches long! I was amazed he had gone after the spinner I had tied on (which was the size of his head). I admired him for a few seconds and carefully released him. I was optimistic we may have dinner soon. A few minutes later, another strike! Another tiny brookie. Minutes later, same thing. Then again. I was surely glad to be catching fish, and these were some of the coolest fish I had ever seen, but I did want dinner! Mike caught a brookie and then went back to help Sean look for wood. I was on my own - further downstream, I hooked into a big rainbow, but two jumps later and my line went slack. Crap, no dinner for me. I was sure we were screwed, but as anyone I have fished with will tell you, I am a persistent MFer. When fishing, that pays off. I hooked the guy in the photo a little before dark and he fought HARD, nice 14.5-15 incher, but I had covered a mile or so quickly that evening, so I hoofed it back to camp with fish in my vest. When I got back they said "ah, no luck?" Then I whipped out the fish and we all started laughing - Mike said - "See I told you he wouldn't come back without a fish" Damn right, its dinner time. We cooked it up with some potatoes on the fire.
Well , it started raining Saturday night and rained all night, the next day and that night too. The fishing sucked, Mike and I each caught two tiny brookies on Sunday, thats it. No fish for dinner that night. Trout fishing was new to Sean and the fishing was rough on this trip, so he didn't have any luck. We found out the river had missed 3 stockings due to snow, things weren't looking good. Monday we got up at the crack of dawn and broke camp, hiking further in. A mile or so down the trail we heard a noise, I said it could be the stocking trucks, but Mike said in a hilarious voice "Aw its the horses, its always the horses John, its never the trucks" A minute later we heard the noise slow, and a big splash! - It was the stocking trucks, and we high-tailed it to the next good campsite, set up our tents and headed out. Mike caught the first trout - a nice 14 incher, within five minutes of us getting to the hole. It took me twenty more minutes to hook the biggest trout of the trip - the 15+ incher on the right. We fished on and off for the rest of the day, catching 6 fish total (mike caught two of the ones I'm holding in the afternoon photo above) by 3pm. I cleaned my share and went to meet Aaron a few miles up the trail, he was hiking in from the top of the mountain, and was an hour late...
I changed out of my waders for a hike, and I left my fishing gear behind. I figured if I brought it, I end up stopping before I had finished the two mile hike through the catch and release area. I would have been really late to meet Aaron. Sure enough it was beautiful, full of good water as you see above and of course Aaron was an hour late (well, in his defense he did have to hike a really rough 7-9 miles across the top of the mountain and then descend almost 2000 feet to the river very quickly), I should have brought my gear, damn it, the weather was beautiful and no one was there fishing. when he got there, he told me he hiked through a snowstorm on top of the mountain. I called it BS, it was over 50 degrees down by the river! Aaron promptly produced a large snowball. Cranberry weather was crazy, it had rained a little earlier, and I could see clouds near the top of the mountains, but I guess that was snow!
Aaron and I hiked back to camp. Mike, Sean and I went out fishing again and I landed 3 more trout in the last 1.5hours before dark - here is a smaller one I landed as the sun was going down. I caught so many jumpers that day, some clearing the water by 3 or 4 feet! Some of these fish were the weirdest jumpers, they just came straight out of the water like a rocket and dropped straight back down, tail first! This one jumped a boulder 3 feet wide from one pool to the next, it was so cool. We feasted that night, I had landed 7 trout that day - it was awesome!

After a late night trying to eat and drink most of what was left in our packs, Mike and I got up early to fish. I had forgotten my net but didn't realize it until I had a good 14 incher on the end of my line, so I landed him by hand and realized I didn't have my stringer (it was early I tell you) so I stuck him in my vest. I got so many strikes that morning, but we were down to our last lures and I missed quite a few. I landed another good fish and after removing the hook he slipped out of my hands and and Mike almost fell in the river laughing as he saw me drop to my knees and flounder around trying to catch the fish by hand in the shallow water. For the record, the fish won, and Mike was smiling big time. around 8:30 we went back to camp and started cooking a big late breakfast, coffee, trout, fresh eggs from Aaron's chickens, and a bunch of ramps (a delicate, garlicky wild onion that grows on steep inclines in mountainous soil near flowing water). We slowly packed up and broke camp about noon, leaving behind the moss and all the trout for every other redneck that was still camping in the wilderness. Good times.

If anyone has any photos from the trip to add let me know, I'll put them up. - Fish on.