Ran across the bay this morning. My toes were cold. It finally felt like rockfish season. First fish was on before I got the spread out. Ended up catching three. None like the fish I caught last weekend but up to 47 inches long. I may wear boots next time.
Did a a bit of wreck fishing today. Caught some small sheepshead, nice puppy drum and sea bass, and large triggerfish.
I started the weekend at the Triangle Reef. While jigging for sea bass, I caught a half-dozen big black drum. I would know it was a drum when I would think that I had snagged the reef but it would start to move. Caught a bunch of small bluefish and a handful of nice triggerfish. I kept a limit of big sea bass. I finished the weekend on artificial reefs inside the bay where I caught little sea bass, more small bluefish, pufferfish, pigfish and a good number of tautog that were tagged and released. One tog was already tagged. I’m a fan of Virginia’s artificial reefs.
Fished Back River Reef for a bit this morning before the front came through. Caught a pup and some specks from the dock before heading out. At the reef, the puffer, oyster toad and baby sea bass bite was strong. I lost the one big thing I hooked. It felt like a sheepshead. Made it back in before the rain.
Grandad passed away yesterday. Charlie Shelton was just shy of 102 years of age. When he turned 100, the newspaper ran a story about him. It said that he had “about” 74 grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren. This amused me greatly. Despite including attorneys, engineers, musicians, mathematicians, teachers, doctors, professors, rocket scientists…apparently, the Shelton clan does not know how to count. How many cousins do I have? I have no idea. I do know that grandad taught all of us a lot about living and made each and every one of us feel special.
Not bad for a sharecrop farmer who raised a family from a converted chicken coop and was told that he would not see the age of 40 after two long stays in a sanitarium and having most of a lung removed due to tuberculosis.
I spent the last couple of days wreck fishing inside the bay and trolling along the oceanfront. The nights, I fished from our dock. Sea bass were a problem at times but I did manage an impressive catch of oyster toads. Some were real drag pullers. I caught some other stuff: sheepshead, tautog, pufferfish, pigfish, pinfish, porgy, flounder, bluefish, king mackerel, red drum, perch, speckled trout, and gray trout. Nothing big…other than the toads. I did have a Mola mola hooked up briefly. I caught 3 tautog that already had tags in them…fish we had tagged a couple of weeks ago. I’m going to start naming those fish. There was a good amount of bait and I saw a number of whales, as many as a half-dozen at a time. It should be a good whale-watching season.
I managed to get in a couple of hours this morning before the front came through. It was really nice, then it really was not. I stayed close to home so the ride in was short. The baby sea bass population is doing very well. Occasionally, a tog would get to the bait.
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Stan and I went back out yesterday to the place we had caught the fish the day before. It was not pretty; rough and rainy. More importantly, the fish were not biting. We only managed 2 toadfish. We did catch a few sea bass and a couple of tautog. It was really slow and we came back in early. I was not going to fish today but when I got up this morning, it looked calm and not raining too much. Well, it was still dark so I really couldn’t see, but it sounded ok out there, so I went. It was a good morning. Still, only caught 1 toadfish but I caught pufferfish, pigfish, sea bass, a few tautog, a black drum, a red drum, and a sheepshead. I was back home for lunch. Everything was released except for the sheepshead. It will be dinner.
