David and John Shulte with Mark Edwards

March 31st, 2009: Sunny and Pleasant, Water temp 53* and Clear.

Picked the guys up at High Point at at 6:15 and went fishing. Set up pulling boards and free lines over 20 foot flat keying on humps and points. The air temp dropped last night down to 29* and after 2 days of howling winds I was a bit concerned how tough fishing would be today. We worked about 3oo yards and hooked up with our first fish, got it in the boat and had a couple more hits on the same flat, putting a smaller fish in the boat. Worked around to hit a couple more points , got bumped but no hook-ups. Came back to where we caught the Stripers before and again kept getting short hits, with little success. My concerns about the day were trying to come true and I knew then it would be a challenging day. We worked hard till 1:30 , still short hits, I kept seeing fish in the channel, not a good thing for Stripers. With a couple hours left I made a 180* change, got on my big motor, found some deep fish and put out 4 down lines right in the fishes faces. Within 5 minutes of having them down we had 3 hits, all killing the baits, not hooking up. Then a real good fish hit the back rod, John in all his excitement grabbed the rod and set the hook like there was a Marlin on the other end of the line, fought the fish for a couple seconds and lost it. Still things were going poor. Another fish hit , Mark picked up the rod and put a nice one in the boat, made us all feel better. I vowed to John he had to catch a big fish or I would rag on him, it was getting late, they were ready to go, I drug my feet emptying the livewell, at the very last moment before I was to reel the rods in , Mark hears a fish stripping line from the reel behind him , jumps up, goes to grab it, remembers his buddy John had to redeem himself, called John over to catch the fish. John took the rod and played the fish like a champ, I netted the fish and it was the largest of the day. Long tough day of fishing today, the guys were happy with the outcome and so was I. That last fish will keep a smile on Johns face all the way home.