Saturday, July 10, 2010

Steve Curran with guests Matt Heidel, Rick and Bill Jacobs

Got out between thunderstorms to catch bait and picked the guys up at High Point at 5:30. I pulled out of the way and showed them exactly how to deploy the lines and how to use circle hooks. I knew of a huge school of Stripers that I had been working every morning so I headed straight for them. They were right where I expected to find them and they were there thick. I told my crew how many pulls to put the baits and started baiting their hooks. I looked at My Lowrance and the screen looked like a pot of spaghetti, hundreds of arches intertwined throughout the screen. I called a friend Brian over to check it out, he got about a hundred yards from me and was on the school. Charlie came over to us and he sat down 200 yards from us and he was on the school. The school had to be at least 5 acres . John was further uplake and had not found anything yet so he came down, stopped about 500 yards from us and he was on the school. So we are all on this school, 15 minutes later it evaporates, we all lost it and looked for 20 minutes without being able to relocate it. After looking for about 30 minutes in the general vicinity I decided to make a big move and went a couple miles and found another school. We set up on it but only caught punks and Cats but we were seeing numerous arches so I put out some trolling rods and Brian also trolled through it picking up about 8 or 10 fish, but mostly punks. By now it was pouring down, John had already gone back to the marina to dry out and buy raingear and Brian was preparing to call it quits for the day. I told the guys I knew where there was a good school of Stripers, but were they willing to run in that downpour for about 3 miles to get to them, they all were soaked and were eager to go. We ran to the area, I located the school and we set up on them. I told the guys before the first bait hit the water that if they got the baits out correctly this time everything would hook up, and for the next 40 minutes it was pandemonium on the boat. No sooner the bait would get in the strike zone before the rod would bend over. We lost the school but found it again and repeated the drill. By now the wind was howling which made it difficult to hold the boat over fish, so I had the guys reel in the baits and trolled through the school to catch the fish. Today we caught over 40 Stripers and about 10 Kitties. The guys kept 20 Stripers and released the others to fight again. We were back at the dock before noon.

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