8/29/15, End of summer and a new fishing scene

As I mentioned in my last post, its been a great year bottom fishing and the freezer is full of croaker, so its time to tun attention to some other styles of fishing.  I love love love catching rockfish , they fight in a completely different way from their bottom-dwelling croaker brothers.  They are more of an ambush, attacking type fish.  And, they want to run as far as they can after getting hooked, different from the croaker that seem to want to refuse to come up off the bottom.

Friday 8/29, able to just get down for a quick fish and then back home so I didn't have much selection when it came to tide etc if I wanted to align with an evening fish, which I did.  So, launching at 4PM on a hot afternoon, I headed straight across Tangier Sound from Wenona to north end of South Marsh Island.  Actually, I stopped just shy of north end and started a troll around the edge of the island with swim shads.  Nothing biting and I managed to lose both rigs on something submerged.  Oh, did I mention it was middle of outgoing tide??  OK, enough of that so I moved to the center of the north end of the island, anchored in about 7 ft of water.  Surely something would find my soft crabs appealing.  I tossed one bottom rig out with no weight, sort of on a drift.   I like this approach and it seems to work best with some decent tide moving. Other rig weighted with 2 ozs.  It wasn't two minutes before the drifting rig started zooming away (I had left bail open) and I retrieved a small rock.  After another 10 minutes, another bite on same pole only this time it really started to run nicely.  Pulling it in I had a nice small keeper rock on one hook, big crab on the other.  In fact, it proved tough to keep the crabs off and they did serious damage to my bait.  This was the last of the action for today, save for an 11-inch croaker just before 7PM and a skate before that.

A co-worker of mine reported having gone out mid-day Sunday (2 days later) and caught a mess of rock.  This was on incoming tide, but what was remarkable was that it was middle of the day.  Note to self,....perhaps this time of year tide more important than time.  Planning to return next weekend but not sure of what the fishing opportunities will be- it will be Labor Day weekend after all and focus on the Skipjack Races.  More on that next week.  For now, hoping to get out on Friday (high tide 7PM) afternoon, also maybe Saturday depending on the weather but forecast now is windy and out of the East NE.