A Great Morning Catch

Jim and Brian Garner

Cloudy and Warm, Water temperature 87* and Clear

This morning my first mate [Michael, my grandson] and I got out early and caught 215 baits for the morning charter. We picked the Garners up at their dock at 5:30 then went looking for Stripers. I cruised for about an hour without seeing a fish so I turned the boat around and went the other direction. The move paid off when I tripped over a small school of Stripers. We put 9 baits out real quick and just as the last bait was deployed Brian hooked up. This fish pulled drag for 10 to 15 seconds and after 45 seconds we boated the first and big fish of the morning. We had other fish hooked up as well and Jim was running from rod to rod trying to keep up. We worked the area for about 45 minutes but after 5 minutes of battling Stripers the buzzards had found us and were closing in fast. I don't like to fish around other boats so we got our baits in and went and found more fish. Again I headed to an area where there were no boats within sight of us. I found some fish and we set up on them. We popped 4 or 5 catfish in a couple minutes then I hit numerous pods of Stripers. We worked the area for an hour or so till we limited out at 9:40. It was way too hectic to count how many fish we caught this morning but we only had to throw away 15 baits. Jim and Brian had been out with me many times before so they knew what to do when a fish hit and also knew how to deploy the baits correctly. Often with new clients they will not listen and continue to do things their way vrs my way and have the same opportunities of catching fish but fail to simply because they don't listen to the proven techniques I use. Usually the difference in big stringers and small stringers is the ones who listen always catch the fish. If you ever go on a charter anywhere to fish it would be to your advantage to listen to how that Captain wants you to fish, after all it is his reputation that encouraged you to book the trip with him in the first place. The Garners book trips every year in June and you can archive back in my journal as far back as it goes and see their nice stringers, all caught in just a few hours of fishing each trip.

 Here is a very small school of fish we saw after dropping off our clients this morning. I was running 18 mph with down scan overlay engaged. With your transducer mounted correctly fish can be located at any speeds.

This is another pic I took this morning before loading the boat back on the trailer. I am using overlay here as well to distinguish 2 Largemouth positioned on top of the 208 roadbed. The Bass with his nose against the break is catchable and probably a nice one. It is probably one of the fish released from a tournament held at one of the  nearby marinas.