Lipyourown
10-16-2007, 06:17 PM
I got to HO on a boat out of Solomons 2 weeks ago. The boat was a 41' Hatteras. Old but really well kept. The owner is new to the Bay and wanted some pointers on bay fishing and told me to bring all my equipment. I took one look at his rig and knew all I could help with was trolling. So troll we did from the mouth of PAX down to PNP.
Hundreds of schools of silversides / bay anchovies. Lots of huge schools of bunker as well.
We started getting knockdowns on various spoons as soon as we passed the "targets". Great to see all the bait. We caught and released about 12 blues with the biggest being maybe 7-8#s. Yes they are coming back. Found a school of breakers on the way in and worked over 3 with topwaters. Saw a yacht burn.
The following weekend we went out of Buzz's marina for a tourney. It was a rockfish tournament with a blue calcutta. I was excited because I thought we had a chance to win the calcutta. I even bought the secret bait of softcrabs for rockfish.
Well, it was a slow day for us. We did catch many blues but they weren't quite big enough and they went back, stripers were not to be had. The winning $1,000 striper was under 4#s! If I had hindsite I would have sat at the lighthouse all day until a 5 pounder hit.
We found a huge school of bunker mid channel with sporadic busts of feeding blues. We jigged for a couple of hours with a couple of other boats but it was slow. Managed 3 that way. Threw top waters too and you could see huge blues follow them, but no takers. Blues were actually finicky...or there was just too much easy bait for them...live lining a whole bunker resulted in a piece of bunker. A piece of bunker got nothing.
Interestingly enough, a member of this board was there that day but he wasn't entered into the tournament. He did well with blues and actually caught 2 that would have put him in the running for the calcutta or may have even won it, it was close...2 fish equalling 14#s. Chime in Otter. Saw another guy who didn't enter and of course he a had a cooler of 10 pounders.
Hundreds of schools of silversides / bay anchovies. Lots of huge schools of bunker as well.
We started getting knockdowns on various spoons as soon as we passed the "targets". Great to see all the bait. We caught and released about 12 blues with the biggest being maybe 7-8#s. Yes they are coming back. Found a school of breakers on the way in and worked over 3 with topwaters. Saw a yacht burn.
The following weekend we went out of Buzz's marina for a tourney. It was a rockfish tournament with a blue calcutta. I was excited because I thought we had a chance to win the calcutta. I even bought the secret bait of softcrabs for rockfish.
Well, it was a slow day for us. We did catch many blues but they weren't quite big enough and they went back, stripers were not to be had. The winning $1,000 striper was under 4#s! If I had hindsite I would have sat at the lighthouse all day until a 5 pounder hit.
We found a huge school of bunker mid channel with sporadic busts of feeding blues. We jigged for a couple of hours with a couple of other boats but it was slow. Managed 3 that way. Threw top waters too and you could see huge blues follow them, but no takers. Blues were actually finicky...or there was just too much easy bait for them...live lining a whole bunker resulted in a piece of bunker. A piece of bunker got nothing.
Interestingly enough, a member of this board was there that day but he wasn't entered into the tournament. He did well with blues and actually caught 2 that would have put him in the running for the calcutta or may have even won it, it was close...2 fish equalling 14#s. Chime in Otter. Saw another guy who didn't enter and of course he a had a cooler of 10 pounders.