Best Trip of the Year!

And so it begins, another year, another season, another chronicle....

"In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours" --- Mark Twain

      The weather on the east coast in March is so topsy turvy, it is the hardest time to find a break for fishing.  But, after two months of trying to think of other things, we will take any small opportunity that there is.  And so, Steve and I found a small window of fair weather last Monday.  We took that opportunity to hit the water and test out our boats.   Even our plastic fleet had a harsh winter.   They had spent it under a blanket of snow.  But now there is a moment.  And so we embarked on our first mission; bloodworms and small hooks, the Mullica River, Stripers and Perch.         

Steve prepares his perch rig

This was planned to be a short trip. We were on the water for about four hours.  We launched around 11:00 and Steve had a short striper bass (local vernacular) on the first drift.  After that, fishing was slow and the wind was a bit of a pain.  As it turns out, the sun wasn't going to break through the cloud cover until after we left.  The water temperature was right around 40 degrees, so these fish were slow on the bite.  Maybe an hour and a half into the trip I had a perch.

My perch

Of course, at the time I thought I would be catching many as they tend to school up, but that was my only perch of the day.  Then maybe an hour after that Steve and I both hooked up short bass at the same time in two different spots.

First bass of 2014

All in all we averaged about a fish an hour.  I have to say, it felt really good to be back in my boat.