Joel Billingsley and friends

Sunny and Hot, Water Temperature 85* and Clear.
Caught 225 baits before daylight then went and picked up my clients at their dock. Knowing it was the weekend I was concerned about all the other fisherman being out early and the pleasure boaters later spooking the fish so I was anxious to get away from other boaters and locate fish early. I simply went to where I could not see another boat for about a mile in either direction, located a school of fish, showed the guys how to deploy the baits and started fishing. No sooner did we get the baits out on the first school we got a few hits then the school moved. We got the baits in and I relocated them, set up on them, caught a couple and within 5 minutes they had moved again. I called a friend Greg who was out and told him to come over to me and we would work the school together. I knew the school was really moving fast and 2 boats working the school were better than one. He was trolling and as soon as he set up he hooked up. The school was moving about 2 miles an hour but we had the direction they were going and we would set up, catch a couple fish, get the baits back in and move again and again. We were doing great till we got busted by a Carolina skiff, once he found up it only took 6 to 8 minutes before a dozen boats were on top of us, naturally spooking the school. The Stripers will not tolerate that type of pressure, motors running over them, anglers gut hooking fish and killing them, consequently the school split up and the fish got into smaller pods of 10 to 15 fish verses hundreds of fish. Within a half hour we had almost every Striper fisherman on top of us so I decided to move again and get away from all the pressure. We again moved to where we could not see another boat, found a school and had our way with them. Soon we ran out of bait and had to convert to using artificial. I located a school, stopped and showed the guys how to work the baits and while I was showing them we had 3 hookups at once. By now it was about 10am , the boat traffic was getting bad, the sun was up high and the fish turned off. We looked for a couple more hours but could not locate a fish so we called it quits for the day around 12:30. Today we caught about 35 Stripers and a few Catfish, not too bad for a weekend. I am looking forward to fishing again during the week in peace.