Bill Setrin with friends Al and Jerry

October 14th, 2009: Cloudy and Cold, Water Temperature dropped to 67* and Clear.
Picked the guys up at their dock at 6 and went and caught bait. Checked a few areas before locating catch able bait, threw a couple dozen times and went fishing. Set up where I knew some nice Stripers were cruising with a spread of 10 planner boards, a bobber and a couple of downlines. We pulled some very shallow flats early looking for feeding fish but none would cooperate. I kept noticing some action on the surface about 1500 yards away so I turned the boat and headed for it. When we got in the general vicinity our baits got nervous , boards started backing up and we started taking hits. On our first pass most of the baits on the boards either got boiled or got hit. We boated a few and turned around to hit the area again but the fish had moved on. I had to guess which way they went, we must have zigged when they zagged because I could not located them for another hour. Once I did I was prepared for them , I had gone and caught 45 more fresh baits, retied all my lines and reviewed with the guys what to do and how to handle numerous hook-ups. We found the school and talk about confusion, rods were bending all around the boat, people running around the boat, Bill shouting out to Al and Jerry which rods were hooked up, everyone working together to handle the action. Once I looked up and Al was holding 2 rods with fish on them at the same time wondering what to do. Bill is on Oxygen and when he would hook up Jerry would grab the tank and follow Bill around the boat while he fought his fish. A couple of times after Jerry landed his fish he wanted a hit off of that Oxygen tank, but he would get side tracked with another strike. We would loose the school for a couple minutes and find them again repeating the same scenario over and over again. We had 27 fish hook up today, lost a couple that screamed the drag, lost a few others that we simply could not get to in time due to not enough hands in the boat. All the fish today were very nice Stripers, we did not have to deal with catching punks today and by the end of the day the guys could not believe what had happened to them. Al said he had never caught so many big Stripers before and Jerry is still wondering about the bait I was using!
A cold front is moving in tonight, I am going to go home and try to bag a Buck this evening.