Too Much Action

 Rob and Conner Cross

 This is a school of fish up on a shallow flat that I found while looking for bait early in the morning.

 We are over some nice Stripers and my side scan is showing me that there are more on the right side of the boat. I simply turned my boat to the right and all the rods bowed over.

 This is a picture I took this morning of a School of Stripers after we had caught 12 to 15 fish. As you can see not only on the sonar but also on my side scan that I was in the middle of a major school of Stripers. Notice the larger fish were at 26 to 30 feet. We had our baits set at 28 feet and were catching the nicer fish.

This is a picture that I took 30 minutes later than the above picture. We were still in the school of Stripers and wearing them out. I would have loved to got pics when we were really on the fish but I was kept quite busy.

Rain, Rain and rain. Water Temperature 79* and Clear.

I got out very early this morning to catch bait. It was raining so hard that the bait would not come to the lights. I struggled to catch 150 baits after hanging lights in 3 different places. I picked the guys up at 5:30 and showed them how to deploy the line to put the baits in the Stripers faces. Once they set out a couple of baits properly I knew they were ready so I had them bring the baits in and I went looking for a school. I ran over a school of Stripers as big as the UVA campus. [Rob is a professor in the management department at McIntire School of Commerce.] I set the boat down and we attempted to get out baits out. We would no sooner engage the reel and a Striper would hit the bait. It was total madness, excitement, joy and fun for a whole hour. In fact, we could not get but 3 or 4 baits out for over 50 minutes without getting hooked up. Conner was having sooo much fun he looked like a chicken with his head cut off running around the boat. He wouldn't even get the reel engaged before a Striper would try to take the rod from him.We worked the school till we ran out of baits, at 7:15. It is amassing what a boy [and a adult] can learn in an hour. They went from catching 30% of the fish that hit to boating almost every one. I kept hearing Rob talking to himself saying "This is incredible, this is incredible....." There was no way I could keep track of how  many fish we actually caught but I do know it was way too much action for two anglers. If you come fishing with us in June and July you better have at least 4 anglers on board or you will certainly regret not taking my advice. My thumb is still bleeding from taking fish off of Conner's hooks.