Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

I drove to the mountains to fish for musky with Blue Ridge Musky really early yesterday. Fishing was fantastic for 8 hours then there was the long drive home. I get a message from Stan Simmerman, trout fishing in the morning, meet me at 4:15 am. I’m still 3 hours from home. OK. I get there early and Stan is already there waiting for me. I’m too old for this… First light I catch a nice trout. Then it was a slow pick but we put in a day and ended up with a good catch. We caught 18 trout including 5 over 20 inches up to 23.5. Worth being a little tired for. Stan lost a monster. Biggest trout I have ever seen. I was sure he had a rockfish but it was speckled. Somewhere in the 30s inches, double digit weight. Fish shaking its head out of the water like crazy. Lure pulls free before I had a chance to try and net it. I’m not sure that little trout net would have been big enough anyway. We needed my cobia net. I tried to free-net the fish and mostly got it in the net but it did not stay there.

3 old, retired guys went fishing again today. David Brabrand was nice enough to take Stan Simmerman and me back after speckled trout. That was as nice as he got. From there, David was a fish pig. He caught the most and the largest two trout (both 22.5 inches). Then he took us in before we could catch any bigger than his. He used some doctor’s appointment as an excuse. He looks healthy enough to me. Stan and I did get to practice our netting skills.

David Brabrand and Stan Simmerman went back after speckled trout this morning. They did even better today. They caught 6 over 20 inches including 3 citation-sized. David was too nice again, leaving all of the citations to Stan.

I fished a bit upriver from them. I drove west over 4 hours to meet Capt. Sam Blue Ridge Musky at the boat ramp. It was a beautiful day of muskie fishing. I think we had 8 bites or so plus numerous follows. I managed to land two really nice muskie. I also caught a big smallmouth bass that hit a muskie lure.

Since I learned of this Virginia muskie fishery, I’ve become a bit obsessed with it. It’s muskie fishing, but I have had shots at multiple muskie every trip so far. I haven’t caught them every trip, but I have had the bites. Apparently, I need to work on some anger issues. I need to develop some. My hooksets are not violent enough. But, what do I have to be angry about? I have a great wife, Tricia Neill, our children are married and employed, I’m retired and I can fish whenever I want. I’ll try to find something…

If you want to catch a muskie without having to make “10,000 casts”: www.blueridgemusky.com

David Brabrand took Stan Simmerman and me out after speckled trout today. We had a slow bite except when it wasn’t. Then, it was really good for a bit. David was nice enough to let me catch the largest trout again. He even went so far to pull the hooks on a really large trout he had fought almost to the boat. He’s a great host but I told him he doesn’t have to let me catch the big fish every trip.

I took a short nap after dinner then headed out for some nighttime speckled trout fishing. Fished on into the morning. I caught small speckled trout. I managed to lose my two big trout at the boat. One went nuts, jumping out of the water twice. Barely hooked and it pulled next to the boat. Not good but I’d been lucky to get that one. The other, behaved itself and stayed down, fought hard. I thought I had another puppy drum. I may have gotten a little too excited when I saw that it was a big trout instead. Much larger than the other I lost. I managed to snag the lure with the net with the trout on the wrong side of the net. Effective dehooking technique. It took the trout a moment to understand that I’d freed it and I tried to scoop it up but watched it slide over the rim of the net.

I’m too old to play like a rookie but there I was rookying the rookiest any rookie has ever rookied.

In-between calling myself an idiot, I continue to catch fish. Small trout and I caught a couple of rockfish. One was too large to keep, the other just right. That is a really small slot we have now. The puppy drum were in the 24 to 26 inch range and were plenty to handle on the speck gear. I kept a limit of redfish and tagged the rest. A good night of fishing…if I had just caught that fish…idiot.

Oh, I took a photo of a black-crowned night-heron to show that Tricia Neill doesn’t take all of the bird photos. OK, yes, she does but I did get this one.

David Brabrand is a nice guy. He took me fishing this morning. He put me on the trout. He let me catch the biggest fish, he netted my fish, and he worked hard catching little fish so I could catch the bigger ones! I have no idea how many we caught. Mostly small fish but the average small fish was better than the small fish that I have been catching the past couple of weeks, a lot of fun. The bite was pretty much every cast first thing in the morning. After the sun got up, it became a slower pick. We caught fish to 21 inches long. After casting lines, I stopped by the polls on the way home and cast my vote.

I went out after speckled trout this morning. I mostly caught small trout with a few nice fish in the mix. The largest that I landed was 21 inches long. I lost a larger trout. I guess that I will have to go back tomorrow .

I encountered a nice buck swimming about 2 miles off of Buckroe Beach. Not knowing how to land this trophy, I hung around to make sure that he made it back to land. I have no idea why it was out in the bay, but that buck could swim.

I went out dark and early yesterday. Caught 3 puppy drum in the dark and lost a couple others. The one I measured was 24 inches, the others looked the same. When the sun got up, I started catching trout, and I caught a bunch. They were all born this year. I kept moving around trying for a good fish so I could say I caught 50 trout up to 30 inches long! Catching trout up to 10 inches just doesn’t sound as impressive…but that is what I did.

I went out this morning to see in the rising of the sun and the setting of the Harvest moon. I caught five speckled trout before coming in for breakfast. An impressively violent topwater explosion made sure that I was fully awake.