Today's fishing

[Sanity]

Well, for some folks tomorrow never comes. Sometimes that's a good thing, but not in our case. Had a chance to meet "tober" henceforth called Toby at a nonPizza Meeting. The fellow travels alot and misses many of the get-togethers, but today was a nonPizza event.

We greeted a doggone beautiful day. Coulda been a bit overcast to suit me and I prepared them for disappointment based on recent results. Better to have it start out with pessimism and brighten it up then to have it start with optimism and have our hopes dashed.

I hadn't been out in the boat for over a month, so I knew it was going to be a bit cranky about holding power, even though I got the engine temperature up to 170. It has been my experince that under those circumstances she might conk out and that's embarassing not to mention potentially dicey. I pulled out of the slip and sure enough, it did and set it's sights on a Parker berthed across from the slip. We hit it gently though adroitly on the port side. No damage at the speed I was going until we ran forth to prevent damage. That lowered the bow enough to hook the Danforth on the siderail and take a couple of dings out of the gelcoat. I made contact with the fellow later and he was quite decent about my misadventure and repairs such as they are with reparations will be made.

We headed for the High Rise with a bucket full of lovely eels. There were already boats there and the usual "best spots" were taken so we tried to anchor up farther down the span. Seem the tide had just gone slack and we actually drifted around the anchor with a limp rope and the eel hung straight down from the boat. This particular eel had no desire to show us his swimming capabilities.

With plan one not looking so good, we went to plan 2, which involved going up the Eastern Shore side of the bay to the Concrete Ships. There we were greeted with bait balls and diving gulls. We hung out with the birds for an hour or so with no hook-ups, though some of the bait was really thick and the birds were eating their fill. No predators were there except us. A couple of other boats joined us but they didn't do anything either.

So it's back to plan 1, hello High Rise. By this time the tide was running stronger and we pulled into the ocean side down from the eelers and started trolling since we were rigged for it anyway. Huge bait balls with fish that pinged off the lines were there and Toby got a hook-up. It was a decent 30 inch fish. Nice fish...bad slot. Over you go after the photo op.



We continued to work our way around the other boats and several eelers pulled anchors and started cluttering up the troll by drifting their eels or just plain anchoring right over the bait balls. Couldn't blame them, but it made the trolling harder to maneuver around them. There was one other boat that was consistently hooking-up and they were well mannered and we worked well together. They fared better than we did and for our efforts, Mr. Shoulson managed to get a Menhaden to strike a bucktail with a curly tail trailer. His effort is shown below. Apparently the filter feeders are getting tired of being on the bottom of the food chain.



The crowd got thicker and the fish more picky with no further hook-ups of any kind, so we moved on to trolling down to the islands. Not "those" islands but the thingies connected to the bridge. No bait balls and no fishies.

We then tried to 4th, 3rd, and 2nd casting lures. No dice.

All in all it was a beautiful day on the water. Boat ran like a champ after it's initial crankiness and we made one last stop on the way into Lynnhaven to see if there really were fish under those gulls. Nope!

As for the parrot, I left him off in downtown Norfolk where somebody captured his laison with his friend. I think that he put one over on his date who doesn't really SEE things the way that they are. When he came back to roost, he had a smile on his face. You have to ask the dog about that.



Nice "fishing" with you, Toby....and if anyone had to be the one who caught the fish.....I'm glad it was you.