Schoolies
May 19, 2015
With the tides just about right and a free afternoon, I
quickly threw some things together to fish the bay bridge yesterday
evening. I got home at 330 and was out
the door by 350. Traffic was a nightmare,
even with the ICC and it took me a full 2 hours to get to Sandy Point but oh
well. Current tables showed max flood
current at 730 pm, meaning it should be going strong that last hour of
light. Exactly what you want. Doesn’t really matter if it’s in coming
(Flood) or outgoing (Ebb), just as long as you have strong current combined
with low light… a match made in heaven.
The bridge pilings almost always have fish. Actually, they always do, but we just can’t
always get to them. Winds were light and
my 16’ skiff was up for the journey.
First checked out some birds mid channel that looked like they were on a
slick. No dice. Nothing at eastern shore rock pile. Didn’t even mark anything with a strong incoming
current there. Off to the shallower
pilings on the ledge to the channel and I think third cast hook up with quality
fish. I lose a few and land a few 20-24
inch fish. I was planning on keeping a fish or two but didn’t have a tape on
board. The new regs are fish must be
over 20” and these guys were cutting it close.
Then I finally caught a really nice fish. I had to muscle him out from between the 6
legged pilings but got the job done. I
had on 20 pound shock leader and didn’t want to risk leadering the fish. It was pushing 30 inches, probably more like
26 though. So I grab the jig head like
I often do to lift in the boat and it thrashed and was gone. So be it.
I was using the same old medium heavy 6’6” Avid, spinning rod, 14 pound
braid, 20 pound mono leader and 1oz jig heads with 7 inch gulp or 7 inch white
zoom super flukes dipped in chartreuse die.
Most of the fish were on the bottom in 15-22 feet but I saw quite a few
suspended and some really nice marks well away, down current from the pilings
but couldn’t get them to hit. Almost
certainly stripers but likely cruising on their own back behind the
piling. Trolling might hit those fish
but I’d rather cast.
After I lost the big one I had drifted well back from the
bridge. I decided to look around, south
side pilings, then north, then the sewer pipe. I never should have left those
fish. It seemed like only dinks were elsewhere when I was on a decent bite of decent
size fish. Finally went back to the starting
point but couldn’t buy a fish. The tide
was still going well, not sure what happened.
But once or twice I banged the aluminum boat up against the 6 legged
piling while inside of the span and that might have spooked those fish. Any noise is a killer in that situation. Now the sun had just about set and I figured
I would like to try and get a fish on a popper.
There should be something in shallow with a decent tide. All I have to do now is find the sewer pipe
in shallow like 4 to 8 feet. The rip
over the sewer pipe is not all that pronounced on an incoming. It’s much easier seen on an ebb tide. Not sure why.
But my GPS points got me close.
Sure enough there were all sorts of good marks in shallow. I should have been jigging but I already
re-rigged. I threw the 10 inch BKD for a
while but no luck. But the top water got
hit, quite a few times even in the waning tide.
Can’t beat that. Stuck a good
fish that I thought was dink at first, even over 9 feet of water. That one came home for dinner. My limit is one. Easy to say when you only decided to keep
one. Sometimes success is that sweeter
when you actually accomplish what you set out to do with respect to fishing or
how you wanted to catch that fish.
Should be pretty good there for most of the summer, just try and plan it
around the strong current at low light.
Quick update. It was late at night yesterday when I was cleaning the fish. I decided to fillet it with the skin on. I almost always cut the skin off but thought I'd do something different. This is the first fish I've killed all year. Anyway, I was in a hurry and was scaling the fish. Man those things flew everywhere in my kitchen. I tried cleaning up but this morning I found one on top of the coffee maker. I'm sure there are others. Oh well.
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