We made it out for two short trips and a very full day of fishing over the long weekend. Wes Blow and I ran the Healthy Grin to the shoals for a short afternoon drum trip. We found out that my windless is not working. Wes became the windless and he did a good job. He also caught a big red drum before we ran in.
Getting up very early to get ready to head offshore bottom fishing, I received a message from Charles Southall. They were just heading in from the shoals and had caught 8 big red drum, loosing several others. We headed on out to the Norfolk Canyon area and caught a lot of different fish. We caught a half-dozen golden tilefish, blueline tilefish to 18 pounds, a number of hake, bluefish to 34 inches, blackbelly rosefish, sea bass to 4.5 pounds, tinker mackerel which became bait, some impressive conger eels (one of which Wes kept), and 3 or 4 species of shark from little chain dogfish up to a 7-foot (I’m calling it a sandbar until told differently) shark caught by Chris Boyce. Chris was using one of Wes Blow’s bottom rigs. It got interesting when Wes decided that he wanted to get his rig back. When he figured out what he was helping with, Dr. Hamish Small, in his very Scottish accent, said, “All this for a #*@#*! hook? This has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen”. I don’t think Wes got his hook back but it was a much smaller, spiny dogfish, that really made him bleed with a nasty puncture wound.
We had Roger Burnley fishing with us, visiting from his current home in New Jersey. Roger caught a new species to us. After almost cleaning the current world-record Carolina hake, we decided to not clean this fish until we figured out what it is. The fish is going to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science today for identification. We know it is some type of scorpionfish. The identification so far from the photographs is a spinycheek scorpionfish. If so, it is about a pound heavier than the current world record. This would be the 12th All-Tackle World Record caught on the Healthy Grin and the 3rd for Roger. He has set the Snowy Grouper World (and Virginia) record twice and is the current record holder.
On Memorial Day, I went back to the shoals with Charles Southall. It was rough and got rougher when the tide turned. We did not stay long. We missed a few drum bites. Charles caught a big sheepshead. I had a cobia follow a piece of crab to the boat as I cranked it in after a missed bite. Fishing is good in Virginia right now.
