I arrived at Dabs house at 6:30 tonight. It was breezy, cold, and overcast, so I really did not know what to expect. He had called me earlier in the day to let me know that the fish had been going nuts the night before slamming silversides on top. The wind was blowing hard from the southwest against an outgoing tide. There were whitecaps everywhere, so we anchored up at the Hillsmere point out of the wind. There was nothing happening so after a half hour or so we decided to give "the spot" a go. The conditions slowly improved as the tide turned and the whitecaps were replaced by a nice rolling surf. Just as the boat began to swing around I picked up a smallish 16 on my new go to weapon "Papa Dogg". I picked up 3 more on quickly thereafter before Dabs switched over to a Stillwater Jr to join in on the fun. It was non stop action for the next hour and a half with nice fat low 20's fish. Tails were slapping everywhere. It was surreal. I finally picked up a real nice mid 20 female with a fat belly full of eggs. This was followed shortly thereafter by a real nice 26-27 class male. Papa Dogg was clearly attracting the bigger fish and the extra weight allowed for a much longer cast. My advantage soon ended though as a big mama broke my my 20 pound flurocarbon leader in half and swam of with Papa in tow. DANG...I loved that old man. We left long after dark while the school continued its feeding frenzy, with a least 30 fish boated and many many more blowups that missed. I would say that the night was one of the top five of all time at "the spot".
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Dabs |
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Captain Carl in white shirt |
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The biggest of the night |
Last week I had the pleasure of fishing with Captain Carl aboard the Miss Grace for a little trophy trolling. It was not exactly my cup of tea, but a lot a fun watching the pro's work a 26 rod spread as my buddies and I threw back a few cold ones. We limited out in less than 2 hours with fish between 35 and 37 inches.