Pacemaker Fishing Forum

The sweet smell of salty bay air!!!

I met Leon Joyce at his shop (he owns the Ashburn Square Barber Shop) at 0415 and then went to pick up Mike  as we headed to Breezy Point where Leon keeps his 19' Twin Vee, Miss Kitty.



We were met with 1-2' seas, not bad especially in Leon's boat. While it looks small, it fishes like a much bigger boat. He expertly rides right on top of the waves!



By 7:30 we started putting lines out....all 15 of them! Running with planer boards, Leon puts out a very enticing spread. Although we had heard fishing had been tough over the last couple of super-moon days (Leon fished yesterday), we were full of anticipation.

That anticipation grew when we started seeing this on the screen.....



But the anticipation turned to fret after almost 3 hours of straining water!

We did not lose hope and at 10:24, in 45.6 feet of water, one of the rods goes down. Mike is up and with an assist from Leon, he gets this guy (just shy of 30") on board to take the skunk smell off and bring in the sweet smell of a striper!





Not too many minutes later, I noticed one of the rods behaving like maybe a fish wants to jump it and sure enough, I get to haul in a nice, fat 32 incher.



BTW, that was my 1st time using a lefty rod.....it actually helps you bring in the fish properly instead of trying to horse it in!

Now it's Leon's turn so that we can get our limit before we head in. You see, the wind was starting to build and now we were in 2-3' seas. Nothing that Miss Kitty couldn't handle though!

It took almost an hour but a rod goes down and the Master goes to work!













The reward was an almost 34 incher!

We decided not to C & R since Leon has stinger hooks on his baits so we headed back around noon time.

Rightly so, the Captain was proud that we all got a fish....especially on a tough day. We knew it was tough because while we cleaned the 3 fish, other captains were coming to the cleaning station with their 1 fish. We talked to several that took a skunk home.

We cleaned the fish, the rods and the boat, packed up and headed out of Breezy as we watched the bay start to froth up with the increasing winds.

Leon has a great system...you trust it and you catch fish!

What a great day on the water!