Fish Report 6/5/06
The Monsoon
Hi All,
Fishing has been what you might want it to be - consistent.
The majority of trips have seen limits of sea bass around the rail or dern close to it. At exactly 12 inches that's 25 feet of fish per person. 28 feet more likely. An odd way of looking at it - a fellow pointed it out the other day. It was a grin. Maybe there's a new fishery management tool there! (I'm kidding!)
Good fishing? Yes. This Saturday past was the exception. West at 10 to 15 was the forecast and then it was changed to 15 to 20 SW with some showers and rain late.
Ho Boy! While most of the morning wasn't too bad, a building sea had a few folks laid out for the duration. Not nice. Usually customers spend the day prone as a result of closing a local bar the night before (there's a mistake you should only make once!) but not this time. Plenty doable, but just plain rough. And then it rained.
And rained harder.
Then it poured.
Everyone was inside waiting for the monsoon to pass... Not. Most were outside setting the hooks and taking off fish; some without even a raincoat. At least one fellow truly enjoyed it. One of those 'man versus nature' events from English Lit...
Gumption.
Caught some nice fish that day, biggest of the week in fact. At one point folks were catching cbass 25 feet down - the fish had risen way off the bottom before growing fussy. In about as tough a weather condition as I'll fish in, one guy limited and many were in the upper teens.
The fishing's much easier on a pretty day...
Heavy fog also came into the picture last week. Great Scott! I do dislike 'limited visibility'. That's why I have the equivalent of a brand new pick-up truck tied up in my radar sets. Multi-color plotter-overlay Furuno NavNets for those that wonder. The best feature is a borrowed military technology called ARPA - Automatic Radar Plotting Aid. With a couple keystrokes you 'lock-up' a target and get a plot of that vessel's course and speed. It tells you how close it will come and when - up to ten separate targets. Neat stuff. You still can't relax, but it really simplifies a difficult problem - especially when there's a lot of other stuff to watch too.
Just before those foggy days last week I'd finally finished installing a family heirloom - the air-horn from my great grandfather's boat. Yes, my boat's always had a horn - now it has two.
Point is, with the new technology you can watch the old technology work. Several times I had boats 'locked-up' on radar and watched them alter course away when I laid on the old air horn. It's loud.
There are skippers that have absolute faith in their electronics. They'll run same speed as ever and just look at the radar instead of over the bow. Others have absolute faith in fate - they run at normal cruise without radar at all! Me, I'll go slow and make a lot of noise...
Ah yes, a fish report...
Tog are scarcely worth mentioning but there have been a few, mostly taggers. With my own eyes I saw two caught on the soft plastic "gulps". What's the world coming to - fishing the noble tog with plastic.
It's safe to bet money that they do work. However, if you see a couple guys with funny looking side-mounted reels or big flat sinkers don't bet that they'll out-fish bait!
Trust me on that...
We are in 'sea bass season' when I go to a 3 tog at 16 inches limit. Of the 3 only one can be female. It's rarely a consideration.
Flounder too hardly deserve a sentence ~ 7 all week. There's some high hopes there I'll promise. A lot of folks want to know when the flounder will 'run' offshore. Using last year alone as a guide I'd say July, August and September. Using the 2 1/2 decades prior I'd say it ain't gonna happen - but it might...
There were many days last summer when we had more flounder on a single trip than I'd had in my entire career. Many were caught on standard sea bass rigs baited with clam. Hard to figure what caused it; I think they were from somewhere else - an anomaly. Perhaps not though - time will tell.
Wherever you're fishing - enjoy.
Regards,
Monty
Capt. Monty Hawkins
mhawkins@siteone.net
Party Boat "Morning Star"
Reservations 410 520 2076
www.morningstarfishing.com
mhawkins@siteone.net
Party Boat "Morning Star"
Reservations 410 520 2076
www.morningstarfishing.com
