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Right after church I took off and met Bob Morgan and Dr. Mo at Gravelly at 12:15. The weather was.....rainy and chilly but I had brought the bimini so we were good to go!
We were fishing at low tide and it was raining but we felt good about the possibility of a good rockfish bite.
So we trolled in our normal lines and as we passed the rock marker, one of our rods goes down but it is snagged. We work it but it won't come loose so 'pop' it goes and time to retie another Rebel Spoonbill. We get back in business when we see one of DC's finest bots coming down the channel...right at us. He greets us with a bit of an attitude and tells us that we are too close to the military installation (Ft. McNair). It seems that one of Ft. McNair's finest ratted us out when we were trying to get the lure loose a few minutes back.
The officer was less than kind and told us to stay 75 yards form the wall. The problem with that is that we are now forced to troll 20-25' of water....we need 10-17'! Well, nothing we could do but try but nothing happened until we went to the point and made a turn in shallower water. As we were headed back up the WC, the light rod (14 lb test) goes down and Mo takes charge and starts fighting the fish.
I gave him the catfish gloves so he could learn to wrestle these babies!
It was a nice 12 pound fish....skunk is off.
We continued to troll the WC but it was to no avail. Our game had been taken away from us so we headed out to troll another wall, the one at Bolling Air Force base. Of course, there was more boat traffic out on the main river.
We started marking a few fish and when we passed a shallow point the screen lit up so we turned quickly and BAM....the light rod goes down just after Curly and Bob had talked on the phone.
That was a very nice 21.5" fish that Mo had the pleasure of bringing in.
We made a few more passes and Bob caught this nice 20.5 incher........
.....yep, you guessed it, on the light rod. That was the hot rod of the day (saved the day for us).
A bass fisherman then moved in on the point which prevented us from getting into the sweet spot. What was up with that? We had been there and made a few passes and he came on in and dropped a marker. I kept quiet but I really wanted to say something. Anyway, he chased the school away and and that was the end of it.
This one was a freebie since I rarely fish on Sundays. It started snotty but it turned out to be a very nice day and Mo got to take a couple of fat DC stripers home!
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Awesome! That sucks about the miscues, but at least you still got on some fish. I wish I could have gone but I didn't check my email in time. Maybe another time!
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What a fun day, thanks again Ernie. My neighbor was so happy when she saw the rockfish. I gave her one and I fillet one. Yes you heard it, it was hard doing it with a regular knife. Yes Carl you would have been proud of me. I cooked it with some soy sauce and onions, it was delicious.
I love fishing.
mo
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Congrats on your 1st fillet job! Now you need to get yourself a good knife.....
I enjoyed the afternoon with you guys!
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Mo didn't bring a banana, did he?
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Dominion Dan wrote:
Mo didn't bring a banana, did he?
Nope....Bob and I checked before he came om board!
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Dominion Dan wrote:
That sucks about the miscues, but
BTW, I called the Lt. in charge today and relayed the incident to him. He said that he would rather have his officers talk to fishermen in a more professional manner since we are their "eyes out on the river". We had a very good converstaion and we agreed to meet one day soon.
To him, it seemed that the officers were "put out" that they had to make a run in drizzly weather. His comment was "good, they need to be out there but sorry they had an attitude".
The rule is that you need to stay 75 yards from the Ft. McNair wall. We violated that when we got snagged and drifted closer to the wall. I think that if we were doing our normal trolling (maybe not hugging the wall as much) that we would have been OK.
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I can see why they might get uncomfortable when a boat stops there as opposed to a boat that is actively trolling but there is never a need for an attitude.
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