The Bob Hammond Crew

October 18th, 2008. Cloudy and cool, Water temp dropped to 68* and Clear. Was suppose to pick the guys up at the marina at 6:30 this morning but when I got to the marina at 6 they were there and chomping at the bit to go. I put the boat in the water and we took off to catch bait. Went to where I had been catching bait but it was really broken up due to the second day of this cold front. Finally by 8 I had caught 50 baits and we went looking for fish. This front was hitting hard and it was windy so I set up in an area where I knew there were nice fish but somewhat protected from the wind. Second day of major fronts can be brutal for Striper fishing and I was fishing for a dozen strikes today. We put out 8 downlines first and started pulling a 25 foot flat , primarily to see how the wind would affect the boat and to see how bad boat traffic would be. We worked 2oo yards without a bite so I put out 3 boards and a bobber and put the boards on a bank. After 5 minutes we got 2 hits but the fish did not hook up. Thirty seconds later both the same rods got hit and the boards went flying across the water. We had a mini fire drill for about a minute working the fish but got both of them in the boat. We worked up the lake a few hundred more yards with more boards without success so we turned around to go hit the area where we caught the Stripers earlier. By now I had out my full spread of 8 boards, a bobber and 8 downlines. We pulled the area full of anticipation but did not even get a strike. What a bummer! I knew then today would be tough. We continued to work in the general area catching a Bass on a downline and a few other Stripers on freelines. Had two other friends out fishing today that did not catch a fish and got bait from one of them and set up in the wind pulling an area where my clients caught some nice 30" fish this week. Put another Striper in the boat on a board and then the bobber got hit. Zac picked it up and fought the fish for 3 minutes before the fish simply pulled off. He had only gained on the fish half the distance to the boat! We sure wanted him to boat that fish but it just didn't work out. That was the last hit of the day. Today we had 11 strikes, Zac is pictured with his first Striper.