Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

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.

I got to fish on the Special Kate this morning with Charles Southall and Hunter Southall. It was a short trip. We ran about 10 miles from Oregon Inet, 3 miles off of the beach. Hunter put 3 baits out and very quickly; the planer bait was screaming drag. I cranked on it for 3 hours (more like 40 minutes maybe, but I’m old and it felt like 3 hours).

We boated our “trophy” limit for the year and looked at other fish rolling around us. We briefly considered putting baits back out to release others but I wasn’t going to crank another and nobody else was very keen. We were back to the dock by breakfast time.

Stan Simmerman took me out after speckled trout today. We did not catch a lot, but we caught some nice ones. We tagged and released four over 20 inches long, including two citation-sized fish at 25 and 25.5 inches long. (Mine was the 25.5, the extra half-inch is very important!). We lost another four or so 20 plus-inch fish. Beautiful January day on the water.

Good day yesterday

Destination Muskie

I thought catching a muskie might be a challenge I would be interested in but was not sure about the doing the “10,000 cast” thing. A couple of fishing friends said that now that I was retired, I should check out this musky guy that seems to have them dialed in. I asked where, thinking Michigan, Wisconsin or one of those other cold places the mythical musky lives. They said that he’s in Virginia.

I don’t think Virginia is thought of much as a Musky destination but that should probably change. It’s musky fishing and I probably shouldn’t say anything, but I’ve fished with Capt. Sam Scott four trips now and have landed musky every time. I have no idea how many I should have landed if I was any good. But give me enough shots…

Yesterday, I caught 6 musky up to 43 inches. The previous trip, 8 musky up to 47.5 inches long. I’d say, the average fish is maybe 40-41 inches with 4-foot-plus fish encountered on each trip so far. Another fishing friend got one about 51 inches fishing with Blue Ridge Musky a week or so ago. I have a mark to shoot for. Sam says that January is trophy month…see you next month.

www.blueridgemusky.com

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.