Sunday, October 14, 2012

The Test

I have had a tough time recovering from the O's losing to the Yankees in the playoffs, thus the lack of posts. The weather has been crazy. The first half of last week was rainy and quite cold, so I was bundled up in my hunting gear. Then things warmed up and I fished in a light sweatshirt. I fished everyday and did fairly well. On Weds, I fished with John King and he picked up a really nice 23 on a Popa Dogg right up against the rocks at "the cove".

Yesterday was our annual community fishing tournament. As usual the weather was horrendous. Last year we faced 25 knot winds that made even the river un-fishable. When Carter and I arrived at the boat a little before 8, we found ice on the deck and a windshield that was so fogged up that we had to waste precious "low light" conditions wiping it down several times. To make things even worse, the tide was as low as I have seen it all year, due to a relentless wind from the west. Our plan was to hightail it to the Thomas Point Shoal and fish there until the sun got too high. On my way to the rock pile, I hit bottom several times. We tried anchoring several times, but with a stiff wind from the north and a tide that was still going out, things just did not feel right. My premonition held true as we were skunked for 2 hours as we waited for the tide to turn. Low tide was supposed to be 9:20, but when we pulled anchor at 11, the tide was still going out. We moved back into the river to fish our "go to" spots in Glebe bay. Again, our plan was foiled by the low tide, which prevented us from getting close to shore. After several engine gouging incidents, we headed back out to the bay to chase some birds. It seemed like every flock we passed had nothing but dinks under them, but I finally had a little baby blow up and boated a barely legal 18. At the point we said "this is crazy...everything we studied for was not on the test" and headed in. Our barely legal 1 pound 2 ounce beauty turned out to be the only fish boated by the fleet the entire day and we won the tounament. Now that is pathetic.


Thursday

Tuesday

Sunday
Tonight's sunset
After a nerve racking Ravens win over Dallas, a game they should have lost, I headed out to Glebe bay to see if things had improved from yesterday. Again, a test that I was unprepared for. The tide was as high as I have seen it all year, and again, none of my practice prepared me for the shifty wind and a tide with zero movement. I made one long drift along the western shore with the wind, but had nothing to show for it. I moved across the river to Aberdeen creek, which I figured would be protected from the wind. Again, I was wrong. It was literally impossible to find fishable stillwater. Finally on the western shore, I had a low up from what appeared to be a good sized fish, but he missed. On his second slam, he knocked my plug in the air and tangled the leader around the front treble. Normally when this happens, all you can do is reel in fast and hit the same spot on the next cast. As I was reeling in the fish slammed the plug underwater and came tight. That was a first. After a very good fight, I boated a very fat 24. NICE

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