Doug Mills with guests Dorothy, Mike and Zeppy

Sunny and Warm, Water Temperature 72* and Clear.
I got out super early this morning and caught bait and met my crew at High Point around daylight. I knew when I met the 3 new clients Doug brought along today that we were going to have fun, they had brought a 120 quart cooler full of Beer and Ice and were ready to enjoy the day regardless if we caught fish or not. Mike mentioned he had " fished everywhere and not caught fish everywhere", I assured him that today catching fish was not going to be an issue. I had planned to start fishing where I left off yesterday on that huge school of Stripers and had been concerned last night after being busted there yesterday while all my clients were reeling in fish that maybe there would be other boats on it so when I came around the corner and saw the "Buzzards" circling in the area I simply headed the other direction. I looked for about 10 minutes and John called and said he was catching a few fish so I went up by him to break my crew in and showed them how to deploy the baits. We worked the area for about 45 minutes catching about 15 Stripers but half of them were punks so I decided to get the lines in and go find a mega school. I looked for about 15 minutes till I ran over about 3oo yards of solid Stripers, I shut the big motor down and told everyone this is what they came for and they were certainly ready. By now they knew exactly how to put the baits out and the rods started bending before we could get half of them out. For about 30 minutes there was constantly rods bent over, one time we had 5 hooked up at once, the rest of the time only a couple fish were being fought at a time. I pulled off of the fish for a moment to re-group, we got 8 lines back in the water and did it all over again. At one time I turned around and Zeppy had rods in both hands bend in half begging Doug to help him out. Once Doug grabbed a rod Zeppy took a slug of Beer and continued to fight and land the fish. We probably caught 25 fish out of this school in less than a hour, we had our limits and had thrown plenty back to fight again. I usually keep count of how many fish we catch but it was impossible this morning to keep up with how many fish came in the boat in just a few hours of fishing. This is the start of the "summer season" of Striper fishing, year after year it has not been uncommon to catch 20 to 40 fish per hour if we have the right live bait and weather conditions stay stable. Based on the size of the schools of Stripers I have seen in the last 2 days this year should be as good or better than previous years. If you go fishing with me or one of my guides remember to bring plenty of people to handle all the action!