Curses, By Alexi

I don't believe in good luck, bad luck or curses.  I eat bananas in my boat.  I wear clothes with fish prints, and sometimes I don't.  I don't have a lucky lure, or a lucky rod, or any of that crap.  BUT, if there is one thing that may verge on the superstitious, it is that IF I have fish in the fridge, I will not catch a keeper.  Maybe it's just a confidence issue, I don't know, but it seems to be true.  Last week I still had some striper steaks in my fridge and all of my fish were 27".  I ate the Striper steaks, and this week I managed to land a 33" 12.5 lb Bass.

And now for the report:

   This was a solo trip, and I wasn't in a rush to get out of town.  I've fished Raritan mid-day, and morning, and wanted to fish sunset this time (without having pedaled all day.)  I got to the Keyport Boat ramp with bloodworms and a cheese hoagie around 3 p.m.  It was a little on the windy side, and there was a nice chop on the water when I set out.  I had my Humminbird fish-finder working, and while during the past two trips I had marked fish,  this time I was not.  Things were different, and all rumors pointed to a flush from the rivers into the bay of fresh water from heavy rains.

   Within 45 minutes or so I had a big blue on, .....and off at the side of the boat.  Whenever this happens I get it into my head that I am going to be crushing big  blues all day.   As the day wore on, what seemed to be this inevitable truth became less and less likely to the point where I was  going to be skunked.  I hit a few new areas.  I passed by some other kayakers who told me they were on the fish, and I was in a good spot, and I kept going passed them.  I was getting fatigued, and starting to hate Raritan Bay when, as I approached the area that I had the Blue on at the beginning of the trip, I hooked into another big fish.  It felt like another big blue, tight head shakes and all, and I was so sure that it was, I was a little cavalier about the fight.  As it got closer the boat it sounded in ways more like a bass.  And then I saw stripes.  I immediately changed my tactics to "Land this fish dammit!"  And as is the case with sunset fishing, it's always the hail Mary, end of the day "getter-done" fish!   (Or I was just lucky)

33" 12.5 lbs

The wind wins, by Alexi

     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...