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What is the deal with the local weather forecasters? When I got up this morning, they were calling for a 90% chance of rain, temps in the low 60s and winds out of the SE at 6. Well, I guess they were right because at one point it rained..for about 2 minutes, the temps did hit 60 as they went up to 76 and the wind reached 6....on the way to 20+!
Enough of that already. Charlie Hill and I met Andrew Do at the ramp at 0710 and we were out to get Andrew his 1st striper!
We were right in the middle of a local bass tournament.....
Luckily, there were only six boats so getting on the water was a breeze. By 0730 we were on the and by 0740, I had the 1st fish on!
This fat 20 incher hit a Minnow Rattler; I was using my GL3 with a bait caster and it was a nice to get started this quickly. Perhaps this was the day to break the code but I reminded myself that, in the past, I have caught stripers early only to be denied more later. Today, that was not going to be the case. We threw everything we had at 'em and we even went all the way to the back of the channel and we got several hits but we landed ZERO fish.
The wind picked up and our drifts were fast paced )over 1 kt). But...it was a nice day to sightsee! We saw waterskiers....
The best fisherman in the world....
And Charlie got his picture taken with the monument in the background (but no fish!).
At about 11 AM, I told the guys that we needed to start moving on back out of the channel. we were way back by the bridges so we trolled out since it's a No Wake zone anyway. As we started to pass the Police Station, it started to get a bit rough as we had an outgoing tide colliding with 20+ mph winds head on.
Right before we passed the statute on the way out, one of lines went down and Andrew was on it like white on rice! His eyes were lit up and a very happy man when he landed his 1st striper ever!
A nice 19 incher!
We re rigged and headed back out of the channel, knowing we only had another 1/4 mile of trolling time left. Charlie was up in case one of the rods went down. Andrew spotted it and yelled to Charlie and the fight was on! Charlie said "whoa, this is something big"! And it was, Charlie masterfully landed this 19.5 pound monster blue cat!
Man was he happy! This is a top 5 trolled blue cat for my boat!
We were just about to pull the lines in when Andrew saw one of the back rods go down (by the way, we only trolled 3 rods) and he got this large mouth bass to complement a nice day.
Getting Andrew his 1st striper and Charlie his biggest cat ever saved the day for us. It was tough to hold a drift due to the wind (why didn't I put out my drift sock?) but we had a good time and they want to do it again!
BTW, the hottest lure was a pinkish Rebel which is now almost all chrome colored. The cat fish sanded the paint off it!
Ernie
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Thanks for taking us, that was a great trip. We casted until our arms fell off while drifting down stream, and then we would troll back up stream, with a total of maybe an hour of trolling through the whole trip and that was when we caught all of the fish. I learned a lot and will definitely try to go back there again sometime!
Last edited by redskinsfan360 (Nov-16-08 8:07AM)
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Actually, we were drifting upstream as the tide was coming in and the wind was blowing to the north. Later, as the tide was going out, the current was still flowing north due to the strong unforcasted winds. That was why it got rough in the channel, something we rarely experience (unless there is a lot of big boat traffic). Poor Andrew had a bad time with his footing (felt soled waders).
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I guess I meant drifting down with the current and then trolling back through the current.
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redskinsfan360 wrote:
I guess I meant drifting down with the current and then trolling back through the current.
I know what you meant...I just wanted folks to know what the conditions were like.
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CozUF2001 wrote:
Nice day on the water...you are brave to go out with heavy winds forecasted. The Potomac can get real nasty.
At 6 AM, the forecast was for ESE winds of 6 MPH!! They blew that one. The run is short and my boat is heavy so I was not too worried. A squall would definitely scare me.
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It was a pleasure fishing with you guys again! Thanks for putting me on my first striper Ernie! Definitely look forward to doing this again.
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