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I woke up early again, and all of my stuff was ready, so why not fish for a few hours. I got to Lake Audubon around 6:10 am and headed out with my ultralight rod and some 3" slug-gos. Eight bass later I headed home. They were all small, so the ultralight rod definitely made it much more fun. I found some new spots today, and reinforced one as a honeyhole. I think I might explore one of the other lakes next week - tight lines!

Lake Audubon

This morning I got up early and took my folding canoe out on Lake Audubon, one of 4 private lakes that are part of Reston, the planned community I live in. I hadn't taken the canoe out this year, and this was the perfect place to do it, It was a gorgeous morning, the water was warm and slick as a bathtub with no wind. I hoped to find some Bass, but my record fishing on lakes is not so hot, I like to fish in current, and I know how to find fish there (fresh or salt), the only exception being small ponds (small enough for me to through a rock to the other side). So I wasn't sure how I'd do.
I spent about 4.5 hours exploring the lake, checking out the turtles, snakes and some cool water birds I had never seen before. I had no idea what the contour of the bottom was like (and I only figured out certain parts), so I just hit the points, some of the docks and over hanging brush.
I definitely found bass, and I think I missed at least ten before I hooked one on a plastic worm - they are light biters and I've been used to those voracious strikes from the rocks and blue fish in the York river. I also saw some really cool stuff I had never seen before, I found a spot where there is a rise in the middle of one end of the lake, like a sandbar, but rocky, and bass were schooling minnows and baby sunfish onto and smashing them topwater! This little guy was one of the culprits, and I had many other strikes and misses (mostly my fault of course). I also lost a big bass because I had my drag set too light and the hook didn't set - it just pissed him off and he buckled my rod and pulled a bunch of line off before he spit it out - dang! But all in all a great morning - I'll be back, its only 2 miles from our condo, hmmm, I wonder what I'll be doing tomorrow...

Matt, Eels, Flats, Blue cats and JD Part One

Its been almost two years since Matt Grimes and I have hit our cat fishing honey-hole we found while Matt was working on a big mural in the Shockoe Bottom section of Richmond. Matt has since moved to DC with his girlfriend Paulina and set up a ceramics studio in NE DC. We've both been busy and really haven't had a chance to go fish together. Friday we made it happen. Usually we like to get there early in the day and catch bait, along with a few small mouths, then cat fish throughout the afternoon and evening. We were cramped for time, so we hit a bait store and got the biggest minnows we could buy and a bunch of eels. We hiked into our spot and waded in to river for a long haul of cat fishing all afternoon and night. Our buddy JD made an appearance, but was long gone by the time it got dark. We had our hearts set on some citations like we had caught before, but the store-bought bait didn't quite do the trick, although we landed a mess of big fish (we didn't weigh anything under 8 lbs) and had some "reel" redneck fun.
Matt got right down to business, within 5 minutes of his first cast, while I was still rigging up, Matt hooked into the biggest flathead for the day - check out the bend in that medium-heavy rod! You can barely see the flathead in the lower left hand corner.
These huge fish are masters of camouflage, they blend right in with the rocks on the bottom and vary in color from dark brown and black speckles to bright mossy green. Check out the mouth on this hog, it could easily swallow Matt's foot.
Here is a shot of the cat - 37" (3" short of a citation) and weighed 20 lbs. You can't really get an idea of the girth of this fish from the shot, these fish are solid and hard as a rock, all muscle and head- Matt was happy.
Here is another flathead Matt caught on an eel, this was a little bigger than the average flathead we caught, around 10-12lbs and over 24". Once again, check out the cool coloration and camouflage effect.
Here was my best blue cat of the day, it went 9lbs 4oz. I didn't measure it, but it was probably 28" or so.We caught a ton of fish and didn't get back to the truck until after 3 am. Matt took a bunch of photos too, including quite a few at night. I've added him as a contributer to this blog, so he should be posting his photos and tell the second half of the story, so look forward to that coming soon! Tight lines!

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: