Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

Charles and I went out to the Triangles looking for big bluefish. I jigged up a sea bass. We trolled on out to the Fingers with no bluefish (or bluefin) encounters. Best signs of life was back inshore where we found some birds picking and good bait marks between the Powell and Rick’s wrecks. There we caught (and released) a single lost rockfish.

Today, I went speckled trout fishing with Wes Blow. Fishing was very good. It probably was the best speck bite I have experienced. We have caught larger fish and we may have caught more when all of those spikes were around but I do not think that I have seen this number of quality fish. I have no idea of the number of fish we caught in the 20 to 26 inch range. There were no small fish. There were a couple in the 16-17 inch range but the rest were 18 inches and up with 21-22 being the average size with many larger than that. The bite remained hot until we were out of bait. Multiple hook-ups were common and we were just slinging 22 inch fish in the boat when the net already had another fish in it. Our largest was probably about 7 pounds with a good number in the 5 to 6 pound range. All were released. Wes tagged most of the larger fish but sometimes, there just was too much going on to take the time to tag them and we just got the fish back in the water.

Hunter Southall and Richie Moore were fishing in Hunter’s Maycraft. They caught fish until they ran out of bait. The last I heard was that they had 8 fish in the 24 to 27.5 inch range.

Jody Linthicum and his fellow kayakers were kept busy with the specks also. Good day in the Elizabeth River.

CHUMLINE NOVEMBER 2012

I fished Sunday and Monday for speckled trout in the hot ditch. I left Sunday not expecting to do much, just sort of a “dry run” for when the fish really got here. Little did I know they were already there waiting. Gene Insley and I fished Sunday and from dawn until I ran out of bait around 2. Bobbers never stopped going down we caught around 60 fish. 9 were between 24-27 which quality for citations. Amongst the catch of speckles were 5 puppy drum as well. Monday I returned to my spot with Richie Moore who had never caught a citation trout. That quickly changed as we caught around 40 fish amongst which 4 were between 24 and 26 inches which were also citations. Just like the day before, a nice mix of puppy drum was in the catch. During this time, several others caught nice fish as well including Craig Paige who landed a 32 inch fish on both days. It was a pleasant surprise to find the fish here so early. I suspect I’ll be back at it again this weekend, hopefully this hot bite will continue. If it does this could potentially be a banner year in the hot ditch.

Spent the day yesterday w/ sons Matt & David up and down the obx coast surf fishing. Light spinning –braid- w/ grubs for Speckled trout — However, the puppies were in the area too !

A bunch of fish being caught…. Elbow-elbow much of the day —

Larry Lusk

We went out to the Triangle Wrecks to try for big bluefish again. This time we found some. Not many, but we caught a few. All on jigs, no bites on the troll. Wes Blow demonstrated the single handed netting technique. Capt. Rick Wineman and his crew showed off what we spent most of the day catching. The sea bass population seems to be very healthy. Rick also had a couple of nice flounder in addition to a few big bluefish.

While we were out there scratching out a few bluefish, Hunter Southall was in the Elizabeth River fishing for speckled trout. They caught 60, including 9 between 24 and 27 inches long.