A Fun Monday Morning

Joey, Mike, Dane, Joe, Zack and Joe Joe

Cloudy and Warm, Water temperature 82* and Clear

This morning I caught 185 baits then Picked my clients up at High Point and went in search of Stripers. We only had motored a short distance before we noticed a couple fish busting the surface so I maneuvered the boat in that direction. Lately the Stripers have been breaking on the surface which is a recipe for some fun but 90% of the breaking fish are punks. I tossed a bait on a free line toward the bank which lasted about 5 seconds and Joe Joe hooked up with the first fish of the morning. Knowing we would get punked but wanting to teach everyone how to deploy the baits I took this opportunity to let them set up on our first school. It didn't take long to start hooking up and having fun. I only hung in there for a short time because I wanted to find some better fish. Twenty minutes into the morning trip and everyone was already pumped. I set up on the edge of a flat and pulled a spread of boards and down lines and right when the flat dropped off into the channel we hooked up. After working the school for about 10 minutes a Bass Boat Buzzard saw us and motored back and forth about 100 yards for about 10 minutes alerting and turning off the school. Why can't fisherman understand Motors Spook Fish! Anyway instead of my clients continuing to catch fish we were forced to move on. We worked a couple other areas with limited success then I decided to move to another part of the lake. We set out 8 downlines over the edge of another flat and started hooking up immediately. We popped a dozen fish in about 25 minutes and were taking hits every minute or so. We were positioned about 35 yards off the bank having fun then another Bass boat decided to run over us instead of running in the other 500 yards to the outside of us. Yup, we worked the area for 30 more minutes without a fish. My crew would have liked to get their hands on  that jerk. Although we found and worked a couple nice schools of fish this was just a morning trip and had to call it a day. These guys are from New Jersey vacationing on the lake this week and took back plenty of fish to feed the families.