[oddfish]

Saturdays Adventure

Capt'n JA, and I had been talking about going fishing. We decided Saturday to be the best (I use that term loosely this year). We met at slightly after 0500 owing to one of my cats leaving a gift on the floor minutes before my departure (these are the things you fix or you don't get to go fishing much). We decided on stripers to start. Capt'n JA dropped a drift line and I don't think it hit the bottom before a fish was on. The fog immediately closed in we made a few more drifts, but the fog and current got the best of us and we retreated to the inner harbor. One of my anchor holes that always produces only got two hits. The fog finally cleared (again a loose term) enough to get out of the channel. We headed for Capt'n JA's haddock grounds. There we found whitting but no haddock. We made some moves. the fog was not unbearable but kept you on the watch. The tide was nice. We made a mile drift with only whitting to show for it. We moved to an experimental site and only got a nibble. We moved to haddock flats. This produced a med-large red hake and a whitting, and I think a sculpine. The wind started up and we move half way into shore. We got over the cunner grounds and found a bunch of baby cod ( to 18"), turd and a stray mackerel or two, along with some cunner. we attempted to keep them live until we got back to the harbor. Mixed success with that but enough survived to make a go at the stripers again. So we have two live fish swimming around in shallow water, and a couple of clams on flounder poles. Happily killing green crabs one at a time. Then my pole goes ripping off, it's a striper, but it's on the flounder pole, which had only a small hunk of clam. I'm in trouble, I've been meaning to reline that pole as it is my snagging pole and there is only about 50 yds of line left at best, and it's 8 lb, and the reels effed. 45 yds disappears in a puff of smoke and I prepare to lose the fish. Somehow the walk to the back of the boat gains a few precious feet of line, and Mr. striper decides to go sideways up stream. A few minutes later 24" comes in and makes for a good story. So not the day we had hoped for but all in all a good day given the weather conditions. We learned some things, we caught 8 species of fish, and I got to meet another MM'er. We'll do it again on a sunny day ( if there ever is such a thing again).

Oddfish