Do I listen? Or do I talk? I think this time I'll just listen.
You know, it doesn't matter what size they end up being, it's just the experience of taking part in what that river has to offer.
Life does not suck when you are staring upriver with a full bait bucket.
Somehow the guy always maintains and doesn't skip a beat.
Not a bad stringer. I think John weighed it out to be about 60 lbs.
After almost 12 hours of watching that rod tip and the JD escape us, John says it all. |  |
Ok, well I landed like 7 15-18" rockfish tonight at the Amoco dock. Caught them on my new graphite med-hvy 6'6" with small Penn combo. I tried a small white bucktail at first and they just played with it. Then I slapped on a top-water silver/gray split-tail bass assassin and the bite turned on a bit. It looks as though it's gonna be a while until the bigger fish roll through because the water temps are still up even though the nighttime temps are dropping./p>
Haha, well this livewell is about 3.5' diameter (circular so that the fish don't get damaged and go crazy with a square design) by 4' in height. I spent $60 on the damn wire and I think that stupid ass True Value ripped me off! That dude has ALWAYS ripped me off! At any rate, works well and I put a zink at the bottom to give it weight and to ward of electrolysis.
Smallmouth On the Run
Hooked up! Oh yeah - I had 3 smallies by the time Matt had caught a dozen crayfish, and that was just the beginning. I fished under the same riffle all afternoon While the girls ladies watched and caught up since the wedding. Rochelle also took photos (all the photos are are Rochelle's). Matt wandered around the river and caught a small catfish, but mostly just explored - its easy to burn an entire day up there just looking for another sweet spot, and there are plenty. I've done it more than my share of times at that park.
I landed 15 fish, easy in 2 hours. Most were very small, but it seems as indicated by numbers on this particular day the smallies are hopefully rebounding from the fish kills that have plagued the upper Potomac and its tributaries in the previous summers. The water was clean, the fish were healthy and plentiful - check out the rich golden color, no wonder people call them bronzebacks.
Heres a good action shot - check out the bend on the light action rod - in the lower right you can see the fish...
This is the nicest smallmouth I've caught in a few years since the fish kills(about a pound, maybe a bit more) , I'm being optimistic and reading this as a good sign.
Early morning, York river, Sunday September 2nd. Greg and I headed out to hopefully catch more big mullet with cast nets, but the tide was against us. We had plenty of bait, but only a few of the big mullet we hoped would score some big flounder that day. But the tide was against us and we took the skiff back and jumped on the parker. We fished Back River reef after getting gas and hooked into a few nice flounder, close, but not keepers. Then we nailed a double, both hooking up with fish simultaneously and landed two keepers - perfect. We had lots of bites and a few snags, but not many takers. A few drifts later it happened...
I felt resistance, drop my rod tip and steadily pulled up slowly in founder hooking fashion, ready to drop the tip quickly if, it got off to put the bait back in front of the fish. Solid weight followed the boat in the drift a few feet as I reeled in slowly and then, the drag started screaming. I stopped reeling and kept steady pressure. The medium-light rod buckled in long screaming runs off and off for at least fifteen minutes. Greg and I were sure I had a shark on the big mullet - I felt the head shakes and everything, but the 50Lb fluorocarbon leader never broke - Finally i was surprised to see the huge head of this...
BIG OLE RED DRUM! 45 inches and my biggest fish by far, but the netting was stressful - he was almost twice the size of Greg's net, and I thought he was going overboard when he tried to heave it in the boat. Obviously he got him - I was flabbergasted. This is the biggest fish I have caught, and the biggest one pulled in on Greg's Parker. Greg is now ready to catch more mullet and target black and red drum after this haul.
Kickin' some ass at water polo at the resort (actual, my team lost by one point)
Cool little puffer(?) fish I followed around for a while to try to get a good shot while scuba diving on the chankanaab reef and park off of Cozumel Mexico. Rochelle talked me into diving and now I think I'm hooked!
Rochelle took this picture of me diving on the reef taking pictures of fish -so exhilarating - We had a blast!
Gregs 25"+ monster - add more greg .....
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!
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 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!
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!
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.
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.
