We look at maps. We look at the weather. We have MANY choices. We have time. We have a truck. We can launch almost anywhere. All of the Jersey Shore is showing winds up to 25 mph. However, Crisfield, Md. is only showing winds up to 15.
 |
| Somers Cove Marina |
We drive all night. We arrive at the launch around 4 A.M. By 5A.M. we're on the water. By 6 A.M. both my rods are going down at the same time.
 |
| Early A.M. calm waters |
Double stripers on the troll in about 2 feet of water. One on a small bass assassin weedless, the other on a gulp swimming mullet, weedless. We spend the rest of the morning finding bass on the grass flats, and along the banks, Steve finds a pond spilling and takes three in a row from there. I had some blow-ups on topwater, and a hook was straightened out, but no landed fish on topwater.
By noon, it was still overcast, but the wind was picking up. We found a nice creek that wasn't on our GPS maps. It cut straight thru the lower half of the island. Some crabbers had indicated it's where the bass were. When they suggested this I thought to myself "the bass were actually all over." It was good to be up in this gut.
 |
| you can't do this in a boat |
As the tide started moving I picked up another couple of fish and had another double. This time they were a little bigger. I landed and tagged both fish.
 |
| action shot from the gopro: "rod goes down on the troll" |
Just as we were exiting the creek onto a flat the wind really kicked up. It was about 6:30 P.M. our plan had been to camp out for the night and fish the next day. That was about to change. Steve dialed in the weather forecast on our marine radios. The wind was NOT going to let up significantly. It had been raining and everything was wet. We hadn't slept and the sun was low on the horizon. The wind was blowing towards the truck at about 20 mph. The consensus was to head home.
I tagged 14 striped bass for the
ALS. I released about four or five others untagged. Here's the list:
18" 2lbs
16" 1lb
24" 5lb
15" 2lb
17" 2.5lb
15" 2lb
21" 4lb
17" 2lb
22" 4lb
22" 4lb
22" 5lb
16.5" 2lb
19" 2.5lb
17" 2.5lb
As we were loading up the gear at the launch we were visited by a pair of salty ghosts. They had been going for Stripers but hadn't caught any keepers (18" in MD.) When we said we were abiding by our New Jersey rules, and that we released all of our fish they were really flabbergasted. We thought "How was that possible to not catch an 18" fish, there were so many?" I guess having a kayak that can go into a creek 2 feet wide or in 6 inches of water has it's advantages...
