Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

I spent the past two morning fishing for speckled trout. Yesterday, with Stan Simmerman in his boat and again today with Stan and David Brabrand in David’s boat. Catching was good both mornings, tagging and releasing for the Virginia Game Fish Tagging Program. A good number were over 20 inches. Stan caught the most fish each day. Today, he out fished David and I combined. But…both days, I caught the biggest fish 🙂 Five citation-sized fish over the past 4 trips, I’m on a roll!

Note: Today, the VMRC made speckled trout catch-and-release only through the month of June in response to the winter kill.

Went out and tagged a couple if specks this morning before deciding I had enough wind. Largest was 24 inches.

I had the pleasure on fishing with David Brabrand on his new boat today. It is a beautiful boat and David was an excellent host. He put me on some really nice trout including fish of 27.5 and 28.5 inches long. I think I caught 8 fish from about 19 to 28.5 inches. David did a great job with the landing net. He did get a little grumpy taking photos and videoing fish releases. He did catch a fish on his new boat, a pretty 23.5 inch trout which improved his attitude. He’s going to catch a lot of fish on that rig. I hope I get another invite 🙂😁

All fish were released. One had previously been tagged.

I spent the past two days fishing with Sam Scott at Blue Ridge Musky. The first day, I caught 5 out of 6 sure muskie bites. I caught two on back-to-back casts. Lots of follows and I may have missed a couple bites I didn’t know I had. I was rather happy with that, thought I had this muskie thing figured out, and I didn’t care if we even caught one the next day. Then Sam told me that this was 16 consecutive trips landing muskie.

The next day, I missed the first bite on a jig. Then, I had one bite a glide bait. It was just hooked on the outside of its face. Pulled the hook on that one. Later, I had muskie come in on 3 consecutive cast of the glide bait. The first bit good, I was sure I had that one, pulled the hooks. Next bit while I had the rod buried in the water, trying to keep the bait deep for the following fish. I saw the bite, but the water resistance stopped my try at a hook set. The 3rd cast just had one follow the bait to the boat without a bite. There were a lot of those including one later by a muskie, with a mark on the side of its face where I had hooked it earlier.

I knew my fishing buddies were going to make fun of me for breaking Sam’s streak. The 5th bite was the charm. I held onto that one. Give me enough shots… The consecutive catch streak reached 17 trips! It has to end sometime. It is muskie fishing, but it won’t me!

www.blueridgemusky.com

Did the sea bass thing this morning with Stan Simmerman and Johnny Boyd. We left in the dark. Had our limit of fat sea bass by 9:30 am. Stan caught a tautog for variety.

I made another trip with Blue Ridge Musky in some rather brisk conditions. “Only” landed two muskie. Started fishing with them last year, hoping to catch a muskie. Now I expect to catch muskies every time. I’ve been spoiled. Shouldn’t say it but so far, I have landed muskie every trip with Capt. Sam Scott. Best day, landed 8. It can’t continue, muskie fishing, 10,000 casts, and all of that. I guess I’ll find out how long the streak can go.

I still don’t catch way more than I land. Casting this over-sized rubber frog (a lure I was laughing at) and I snagged a log. Still think I snagged a log but somehow it turned into a big muskie with a bad attitude. I was on the bow; it took off and wrapped around the stern. I did not control my fish. That was the most impressive lost fish of the day, but I managed to not catch others.

A cool catch was one that followed the lure to the boat and stayed with the figure eight thing but never ate, just hung out looking at it. Sam handed me light rod with a tube jig on it and had me just toss it out in front of it. That fish looked at that jig bouncing on the bottom, for over a minute before finally eating it. That was a fun catch on tackle I’d use for speckled trout. (I managed to not catch other fish on that jig but got this one).

www.blueridgemusky.com

I got up this morning and it was beautiful outside. Hard to believe Armageddon is coming. Too calm not to fish. I still had a few eels left that I decided to drag around for a bit before letting them go. I ran up the bay to the Range Tower area. I passed a duck that didn’t fly away. I stopped and went back to see what was wrong with the stupid duck. I rescued the poor thing and ran on up the bay. Slick calm and no other boats in sight. The rockfish were still there. I got 4 bites. Two pulled off pretty quickly, lost a big girl at the boat, and caught one.  

The plan was to fish with Blue Ridge Musky on Tuesday and drive from there to Wanchese to fish on the Special Kate the next morning. Captain Sam Scott said that we might want to reschedule the muskie trip as it was going to be too cold to keep the reels from freezing while casting. We could just drag baits around. Sam, I’m retired, I can fish anytime you say. So, muskie trip rescheduled, headed to Wanchese. Gorgeous down there and we didn’t run anywhere. Just get out of the inlet and fish right off of the beach. Hooked 5 bluefin. One was small enough to keep. Released two that were too big. Broke two off and broke two rods. Actually, broke the same rod twice. Bishop Fishing Supply, the Southalls need a new planer rod and probably some other stuff. Those bluefin are mean.

Stan Simmerman took me out after speckled trout. It was a last-minute thing: I’m going, want to go? We tagged and released 11 speckled trout. I caught fish of 22 and 24 inches long and I lost a couple more about that size. All of the other trout were under 20 inches. Stan may have let me catch all of the big trout but was gizzard shad master. Both of his were bigger than the one I caught and one was a true trophy. He wouldn’t pose for a photo with it though. Those shad masters are a secretive bunch.