With September predictably buzzing past me at an alarming rate, I decided to carve out a little 2-day break and head down to Deal Island. Plan A was to crab on Day 1 (Thursday), and to fish on Day 2. Having scheduled this weeks in advance, I had little choice but to brave the mild nor'easter that welcomed me on Thursday. After October 1, gas-powered outboards were not to be allowed in my favorite spot, the Deal Island Impoundment in Dames Quarter. This is year 2 of this draconian restriction, intended to improve the experiences of the waterfowl hunter, despite my objections to the state of Maryland. Oh well. With the impoundment having been closed much of the summer due to littering and "vandelism", I expected there to be an abundance of crabs. And, I was not disappointed.
Having launched my jon boat (for the first time this summer) and navigated to the 2nd dyke, I began a slow but steady capture of crabs from my turkey neck handlines at around 11:30. Then as 1pm approached, all hell broke loose. The crabs began to hit my 10 lines so aggressively I had little time to move from one to the next. Soon, they were either crossing all of my lines, or ripping the baits right off the strings. This continued for another 45 minutes, at which point my bushel basket was completely full off some of the nicest crabs I had seen or caught in quite some time. Had I wanted to fill a 2nd bushel, I'm certain I could have done so in short order. By 2pm I was back in the truck, boat back on the trailer.
Day 2 broke bright and beautiful, a complete antithesis to the day prior. After cutting the grass (which had not been mowed in 3 weeks), I prepared the center console for some rockfishing, including securing some difficult-to-find soft crabs. Just then my buddy Capt. Danny Benton stopped by with a gift- a nice mess of white perch fillets. YUM! So, I stuffed those into the fridge and talked Danny into going fishing with me that afternoon. Danny had never been aboard my boat, nor had we really ever caught any fish together. I was so excited that he was going to join me. Fishing alone is nice, but its also great to have a buddy sometimes.
So, at around 2 pm I towed the boat down to Wenona for an incoming tide launch on this gorgeous sunny 78F autumn day. I stopped in at Arbys and bought a bag of ice. Everything was set!!! We lauched the boat, and I allowed Danny to play fishing guide. Oddly enough, he took me through the cut between Wenona and Little Deal ISland, into the Manokin, and all the way back into my favorite deep hole in Laws Thorofare, where I sometimes fish for hardhead. I was glad for the guided tour, as I had never approached this spot from Wenona but had often thought about it. So, we anchored, and as usual my next move was to get the tunes set up (I carry a DeWalt boombox for playing music while I fish). Got the rods rigged, music playing, and then I open the cooler to pull out some soft crabs to cut for bait. But wait- oh CRAP, the cooler is empty. No soft crabs. At which point I realize I had left them in the other cooler, which is identical to the one I packed, minus the seat cushion on top. Next thing I realize is that I also don't have the bag of ice I bought. You gotta be kidding me??? I guess I was so excited about Danny fishing with me, that I picked up the wrong cooler AND left the bag of ice which I paid for sitting in the icebox at Arbys. Epic fail. Well, we had a good laugh about this. This is SO not like me, I'm usually very thorough when prepping for going out on the water. Any way, we try spot after spot after spot, with the squid and shrimp I had brought. No dice. Either the rock did not want what we were offering, or we were in the wrong spot. Going back out into Tangier Sound with our croaker bait probably would have been a good idea, but we were focused on trying to catch a rockfish. So, as a consolation, I offered to cook up all the white perch Danny had brought me. And that's exactly what I did. I fried up probably 50 small white perch fillets at the camper, and we gorged on every single one of them as the sun was going down.
Saturday, I had to return home, so no chance to redeem myself on this trip. A pretty crazy October has me tied up until end of the month. I'm hoping to return 10/24 for more crabbing and fishing. Only this trip, I'll have to use an electric motor crabbing. And, the fishing will have to be either trolling near the shore or using some frozen peeler as bait.
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