Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

I ran over to the Eastern Shore for this morning’s sunrise. I caught 4 red drum from 42 inches up to a fat 50-inch fish. I pulled the hook on a 5th drum. I was back in time to take Tricia Neill out to get a softshell crab sandwich for lunch.

I ran over and watched the Mother’s Day sunrise in the breakers on the Eastern Shore. Tagged and released 3 big red drum and made it back in time for Mother’s Day lunch. Happy Mother’s Day!

I had the pleasure of fishing on the Special Kate yesterday with Charles Southall and Hunter Southall. We turned south out of Oregon Inlet. Put a spoon out in some busting fish and caught a big false albacore. Some grouper season is opening soon and Hunter wanted bait. Bait acquired, we looked for drum and found a school of reds along with a dozen other boats. I picked a big red out of that rodeo. We left them to go off on our own and found multiple schools of big black drum. We caught all of those we wanted. Measured one at 49 inches. We left them and looked for a cobia. We found rays, turtles and more black drum but never saw a cobia.

Went out after tautog with Stan Simmerman and Johnny Boyd. We caught 45 tautog before running out of bait. No big togs. I did lose a real one that hurt my feelings. Johnny’s feelings got hurt by some impressive sea bass that he had to release. He kept describing how he would have prepared them. Something to do with butter and garlic. We kept a few togs but tagged and released most of them. We recaptured one tagged tog that we had tagged a couple hours earlier.

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.