Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Keith and Stephanie Berry 2






Cloudy and Breezy, Water Temperature 44* and Stained.
Picked the guys up again at 6:15 and since we had fished yesterday and caught 30 Stripers I asked them if they wanted to go after the numbers or big fish, Keith was greedy and said he wanted both so I made the decision to go after big fish first then if things got bad I would look for numbers of fish. The wind was blowing, fog was on the water and it was cold but I set up where I knew some nice fish were occasionally using right out in the wind. I knew if the fish did not bite my clients would get cold so I broke out my heater just in case. We popped a nice fish right off the bat then another every 5 to 10 minutes for about an hour. About 15 minutes had passed without a fish and I was concerned that these fish may have turned off and I started to plot my next move. I told Keith that if we did not get a couple nice fish real soon I was going to make a major move. Well my angels must have heard me say that because next thing we knew Steph hooked up , 5 seconds later Keith hooked up, while Steph was reeling hers in another rod went down right next to her, I netted her fish, netted Keith's and looked behind him and a rod was buried, he jumped on that and 3 more hooked up just as he grabbed the rod. Rods were bent over all around the boat, fish were on the deck, loose lines were dangling , and these guys were screaming! I don't know how we did it but we worked together and boated 8 out of nine Very nice Stripers that hooked up within 3 minutes of each other, before 8 o'clock! We released a couple of fish there and just like yesterday when we released fish, the freed fish alerted the rest of the school and it was over as quick as it started. We made a move and put out a spread of 11 planner boards, a bobber and 3 downlines and pulled a mile stretch catching 4 more Stripers and 4 nice Largemouth Bass. We ended up keeping 12 Stripers today, releasing 8 others and the Bass to fight again another day. Keith and Stephanie had quite the smile on their faces when we departed, I don't think they quite expected to catch 50 Stripers in the 2 days they were out with me.
PS...Stephanie redeemed herself today after loosing a hog yesterday, she caught the largest Striper of the trip which she is proudly holding in the picture. The last 2 days were a warm up for where they are fishing tomorrow, they are going out with Chris Eberwine on the James looking for some 50 pound Catfish.

1 comment:

JayT said...

Nice job Jim. How deep were those largemouth? I could've used some of those this weekend!