"Are there any blues around here?" by Alexi

 "Plugs are American in origin and Americans enjoy fishing with them.  When a bluefish explodes under a surface popper, the reason is clear to see.  Even though I have had this happen to me countless times, I am still inclined to put tooth marks on my heart when the attack comes."  

from a book titled "Bluefishing", Henry Lyman

©1987 published by Lyons & Burford.

   (And now just a few words from myself, otherwise I'd like to let the photos do their job for this post.)

  We started fishing at first light.  I had spent the night out there and Steve met me in the pre-dawn hours.  All of the bass were schoolies and I keyed into them in a couple of spots.  The blues, however, were gators.  I had confidence in my all white smack-it jr. popper mostly because, after a morning of slow fishing, I had talked to land based caster who had just landed ten or so blues.  So I passed him slowly, switched to my popper, and started casting around the grass flats with my lightest-up;  Stradic 2500, 15lb braid, 20lb leader, on a Cabelas salt striker light rod.  I like this set-up a-lot for the bay and haven't used it much this year.  It's almost like a fly rod, if I want to get a small offering out there I can.  

The reason I fish

large piranha

     We moved off of the flats out onto Seal Island which borders OCC.  Unfortunately,  it looks like Seal Island is shrinking.  The Sedges are ever changing, shifting, and mostly the fish back there move around, but consistently we've pulled out some big blues on bucktails from this spot.  Once Steve keyed in on his retrieve and cast he was pretty much on fire.

Blue on a Bucktail from Seal Island 

too big for the bag/smoker 

What has been a SLOWWW spring is now starting to shape-up.  This is Steve's biggest bluefish ever.   Could this become the personal best record breaking Spring we've been hoping for?