gas docks etc

[Tins-]

today the spot cooperated but the stripers were hard to find and picky when we found them. started the morning catching spot. they were small....4" mostly. headed over to the gooses reef and found no marks after poking around for 10 minutes or so. plenty of bottom relief, just no fish and so didn't even pitch a bait in.

ran to ches beach area to about 30 ft and saw a few schools of big bunker right up on top just wandering. didn't appear to be hassled by anything. pitch a couple spot baits into a massive school and then tossed a storm a few times with livelines in the rod holders. nothing on that. did that for 10-15 min and didn't see anything on sonar that looked like arches, just the mottled patches of bait on the screen.

raced down to gas docks in flat calm and didn't see hardly any boats till we got to the gas docks. must've been 50 boats there. we putted around watching and it seemed pretty slow, but we saw more marks here than those other two areas so we anchored up at the very end of the outgoing. right away all 3 kids are hooked up! but the fish get all twisted up and we lose two. the one that came in was a 24". got real slow after that. managed 3 keepers total, and a few throw backs. looking around i didn't see anyone doing better than us. one boat the guys were jumping in and not even fishing. there were blues biting off baits. seemed like the fish were hitting baits with hardly any weight-sort of free swimming. we had a couple on the bottom with like 2oz egg sinkers and they didn't get touched. so i guess the tail end of the outgoing was the hot time. slack tide sucked, and there was no wind. we toughed it out in the heat to wait for the incoming, and when it started coming in the fish didn't seem to be turning on so we headed for home.

way home we tried a flounder drift by taylors island flats and didn't pick up anything. between the kids complaining about being ready to go home, the heat, and the crabs all over the baits we decided to pack it in and work on flounder another day. tons of sooks were roaming the flats area and tearing up the baits. noticed the water over the center of the bay was looking relatively clean. the water on the flats was browner and TONS of jellies-just an observation.

good day, just HOT.

[Wiley Old Coot]

Good Report Tins...

I had the same experience on Friday with another angler aboard, doing LTJ in the Stone Rock, Sharps Island, False Channel area and saw very few isolated marks, and no breaking fish. Huge schools of BIG Menhaden were moving through the mouth of the Choptank, nothing bothering them, flat water. Never did hit the mother lode.
Rich