Find the Pattern, Fill the Cooler

This weekend I got to enjoy a two-day fishing adventure.  Weather again was a major factor, as a series of cold fronts had hijacked our weather for nearly a week.  This was good news in one respect, as the bay's waters were kept unseasonably cool.  However the wind blew hard out of the NE on Friday June 15, and the small craft advisory compelled me to take to the back waters of Deal Island with my smaller john boat.  Not a problem, I had been looking for an excuse to return to one of my favorite shallow water fishing holes.  I anchored there at around 3:30 pm, targeting a 5:50 low tide.  I was rewarded in less than 10 seconds with my first fish.  Unfortunately, the remainder of the afternoon, while gloriously cool for June, produced 10 keeper hardheads- all in the 11-12 inch range, and one nice white perch.  Decent numbers but disappointing in size.

Saturday June 16 and things had changed.  The wind was still blowing 15-20 mph but had shifted slightly to the east.  Waves were 2 feet but it was not a messy chop, it was nice and regular.  I motored out to teh vicinity of charter boat Little Art about 1/2 mile north of buoy 12 and began making east-to-west drifts right past them.  My drifts started in 30 ft of water and when hitting 55-60 ft, I repeated the circuit.  Again I caught a couple of fish almost immediately, and these were noticeably nicer in size.  The first few drifts I hung fish between 30 and 40 ft.  After that, they clearly shifted to 40-50 feet, and I was able to zero in on these ranges.  And as the evening wore on and the tide changed, the fish again went more shallow.  I worked two rods at the same time and it was all I could do to jump from one to the other.  Finally at about 7 pm or so, I had caught my 25th keeper fish (>11 inches), the legal limit of hardhead, and so my day was done.  The loved the nice thick and stinky squid I was throwing at them.  Perhaps half of these keepers were in the 13-15-inch range, really nice, fat fish- many spawning females.  It had been a few years since I caught my limit, and I motored back to the dock proud but tired.

One quick detour.  On Saturday there were two guys fishing in kayaks right out with me in the middle of Tangier Sound.  This is 2 miles from shore and in some fairly rough and cooler water.  Not smart.  I got to talking to one of the guys, he had his kayak blinged out with depth finder and gps.  Hopefully they were waterproof.  I saw from about 100 yrds away one of the two flip his kayak, then struggle for 20 minutes trying to get himself teh Little Art, thankfully and luckily positioned right nearby.  Then the 2nd kayaker flips trying to help his buddy out.  This guy appeared a little more experienced, as I watched him roll his kayak back into position and re-mount it, a maneuver he had obviously trained for.  Turns out kayaker number 1 had failed to re-insert his drainplug from the day before.  These guys were lucky to have someone near to help, otherwise this could have gotten ugly, and I'm talking about read about it in the newspaper ugly.  WOW.. Be Safe

A new dog day, and more fish

As I left off on my last blog, I described how I was recovering from the devastation of having suddenly lost our dog.  Finally after about 7 days of weeping daily like a little sissy schoolgirl, I turned a corner with the grief.  On day 10, my family asked if we could go meet a young dachshund whose family was no longer able to keep her.  And so, a new chapter began as Junebug became a member of our family.

Friday June 8- time to fish.  Conspiring good weather, decent tide time, and recent good fishing were enough to warrant taking a half day off work.  Blair, my youngest- joined me for the quick trip.  The plan was to jet down, prep the boat, have a "guys night", and zip back the next morning to continue getting to know Junebug.  We launched at 2:45 pm to catch a 5:50 pm high tide and paused after dunking the boat to replace one of the rollers on the trailer.  Repair quickly made, we motored out of Wenona and zipped right across Tangier Sound to the same location I had been several times prior, which was due west of Wenona harbor, on the west side of the channel, and about a mile north of the #12 buoy.  Feeling confident that the croaker had completed their transition to readily accepting squid, we did NOT bring any soft crab and instead went with squid and shrimp.  The shrimp- already cooked salad-sized shrimp, work well when the fish get picky, and also they are easy to deal with since you don't need to cut them up.  This would prove to not be an issue on this day.  I cleaned 2 really large squid at the start and that was more than we would need for the afternoon.

The wind was out of the WNW at about 10-15 mph to start at about 3:15 pm, and seas were a steady 1-2 ft, just right with the air temps at about 81F.  Water temp at surface was 73.6F, still unseasonably cool and likely the result of two consecutive cold fronts.  And as has become a regular thing, we drifted past the anchored charterboat(s) and gave them a fishing lesson.  We had to work pretty hard for our catch, as I never could discern a specific pattern.  We caught fish between 28 and 48 ft of water, and it changed with just about every fish.  So, the lesson here was to just drift off the 20 ft shelf into deeper water, over and over, and be ready.  Blair fished half-heartedly and intermittently, which is fine, but the result is that basically we were going with one rod most of the time.  I caught 12 of the 14 we kept.  We threw back maybe two fish, but most that we kept were in the 12-14-inch range, and probably half 13-14.  Nice fat croaker.  We ended a little earlier than I had hoped- at about 7 pm, but the tide was really starting to run out and probably so was our fishing.  The reports of rock, speckled trout, perch, and black drum were all appealing but these would have to wait for another day with more time.  And so, I am already forming my game plan for the next opportunity.

The Last GoodBye

Today I am going to take a brief detour from my chronicles of fishing to talk about the loss of one who was arguably my best friend, at least on some days.   Sweety joined us in 2004.  My daughter Kara had picked her out from a bunch of other mini-dachshunds, or more accurately I believe Sweety picked out Kara.  Sweety had become a core member of our family.   Sure, she was just a dog, but she really was one of us.  We cared for her and spoiled her, and in return we received her never-ending and unconditional love- and even this isn’t something you can expect from her human counterparts.  Sweety always had to be touching you, and if you were sitting- she was surely in your lap.  That’s how much she loved us.  And yes, she slept in the big person bed, always tight-pressed up against me.  That’s just how we rolled. 

Sweety left us suddenly on May 29.  Her heart, which was enlarged, finally could not keep pace with its demands.  And the details of this last day are difficult to recall, other than she enjoyed steak for dinner and DQ ice cream for dessert.  I miss so many things about her.   Her clown-like demeanor and how she would bring her toys to me for us to play.  The way she greeted me whenever I entered the house, especially when I got home from a long day at work.  The way she would snore gently as she kept me warm on a winter night.  The grief from losing Sweety has been thick and palpable.  A week later and I am still weeping like a little sissy school-girl.  You see, I was her favorite, and everyone knew it (my wife says that we smelled alike and also that I was hairy like Sweety).  I can say that catching fish for awhile made it all just a little bit better.  And so, I now move on to tell the details of my fishing adventure this past weekend.

Saturday, June 2.  The winds were blowing hard out of the NNW, 20-25 mph.  But the forecast had them laying down a bit around 5 pm so that was all I needed.  Also, the cool front which had just blown through was expected to persist, and I knew that if the water temps could stay down a little cooler than normal that this would be good for the fishing.  And so it was.

I launched form Wenona around 3:45 pm, with expected low tide at 6:40.   I targeted the area just WNW of the Wenona harbor, on the west side of the channel.  There was one charterboat bottom-fishing there in deeper water, so I set up just to the shallow side of him and about ½ mile north.  The wind and tide moved my drifts very quickly, but 4 oz of weight was just enough to get my lines on bottom.  And as happened so many times before, the fisherman on the anchored charter boat twiddled their thumbs as they watched me pull in fish.  I was hitting about 2 fish every pass of my drift, and only using squid to get it done.  At first it was in 45 ft of water, and then it moved increasingly more shallow.  By 6 pm I was catching fish in 15 ft of water.  All fish were nice, and some were 14-15 inch class.  I put 13 in the cooler before the wind became overwhelming at around 6:30 pm, discarding only one.  I believe I would have hit my limit of croaker had it not been for the wind, but I’ll never know.  And so, I dream of my next outing and calmer waters.