Kathy and Todd

Cloudy and cold, Water temperature 44* to 50*.
I picked my clients up at 6am and went to catch bait. On the ride to catch bait I told Todd that usually after a major blow like we had yesterday the fish turn off. I also mentioned to him that on the Virginia Wildlife calendar today was the worst day of the month to fish. After 45 minutes of throwing we had plenty of bait so I set out a spread of 12 planner boards, 2 free lines and a bobber pulling 10 to 15 foot flats and humps. We worked the area for an hour without catching a Striper. We took a couple short hits, probably Kitties. We got the baits in and moved to a deeper flat. We worked that area for a couple hours, getting plenty of hits but boating only Catfish. [When the nice Stripers don't feed the Cats and punks will] By now it was after 9 so we made yet another move. We ran a few more miles where I decided to try yet another pattern. We put our spread of boards out again but I put the outermost boards right up on the bank. We popped a couple Stripers and I knew we may be on to something. After getting all our lines back out with fresh bait we hit the bank again and all hell broke loose. All at once everything we had within 30 yards of the bank went off. At one time we had at least 6 fish hooked up and other lines taking hits. Needless to say it was quite the fire drill. As we would catch a fish Todd and Kathy would put the fish on the floor and grab another rod. All I could do was keep up netting the Stripers. Todd was so excited I accused him of messing the floor up, not only was it covered with fish but the floor was white! Later once we started taking the fish off the hooks we realized that we had hit a school of spawning Stripers, vindicating Todd. We kept 12 of the Stripers that were in the poorest shape and released 5 others that swam off happy to get back to their school and have some fun. The bottom picture is the scene just after the melee. We were off the water in plenty of time to eat a hot lunch.