Josh, Kurt and Kyle

August 19th, 2009: Cloudy morning turning into Sunny, Water Temperature 88* and Clear.

Got out early and caught 200 Herring, picked the guys up at 5:45 at High Point. This was the first day back on the water in two weeks so I resumed where I left off catching Herring and searching for schools of Stripers. It is getting daylight about a half hour later now so I took that time to show the guys how to deploy the lines. Found a small school nearby the marina and tried to set up on them but as usual the first set up is very slow and it took way too long to get the baits down so we lost the school. I assured the guys that every time we set up it will get easier and things will go faster. I looked some more and found a very large school, the guys started setting up and I called John to the school. This time it went a little better, we started popping Stripers and when John got there he saw the school about 150 yards from me and they started catching fish as well. After about 5 minutes John looked over at me and we both threw both hands up in the air, we both were frustrated because both of our sets of clients were still green and having difficulty getting the baits out properly because this was only their 2nd set up and John and I knew that if we could just get all our lines out we could slay the fish in this huge school. We worked the school for about 30 minutes and eventually lost it, so I got back on the motor and started looking again. I located another large school in the mouth of a creek and told the guys that this time they knew exactly what to do and we would spank the Stripers. They jumped up, got all the lines out to the exact depth that I called out and everything went off. At one time I looked on the deck and there were 5 Stripers on the floor still with hooks in their mouth's and they were reeling in others. Well I only had 10 lines out so by the time we removed the hooks from the fish , rebaited and got all the lines back out we had lost that school. By now it was about 9am, and I was getting worried that it was time for the schools to break up and quit feeding. I got back on the motor and looked for 3 more hours for fish, stopping often to fish some singles but in the next 3 hours only caught 1 Striper. For the last month the scenario has been pretty much the same, better catch them early and while they are schooled, after that it is just a boat ride. Kurt is pictured holding a Bass he caught on the old road bed out in front of the marina's, looks like he was mad but he wasn't, he just looked that way a lot today. The guys were having a bet to see who would catch the next keeper but it only applied to Stripers. That bet may go on for the next year, after they made the bet we never caught a keeper or could ever locate a Striper to fish! We kept 9 Stripers for a picture and released the rest, the guys did not want to take any fish back with them.