Comedy of Errors

 Jim, Tony, Zeke, Kat and Bob

 A couple of nice Stripers. Signals are long on the echo page but I focus on Side scan mostly when sizing fish. You can see a couple long vertical white dashes about 40 feet from the boat but I also see two nice shadows behind the fish tell me they are decent fish.

 This is a school of punks. Again check out the small white dashes on the side scan.

Here I slow down from plane to 1.8 mph when I saw these Stripers. As I was moving fast they appeared as a yellow-reddish glob but as I slow they developed into arches. Again check out the side scan. To the right at the bottom of the side scan window the dots are small when I was going fast but as I slowed down you can see that they were nice fish with large white dashes with shadows.

Cloudy, rain and cool, Water temperature 77* and clear.

Today I had regular clients Jim and Kat. They invited a few of their friends that go out with him every year with me. It rains every time they book a trip. They usually drink a couple of cases of good beer [with a designated driver] and have a ball all day. Today was no exception. Before Jim even got on the boat this morning he apologized in advance for Zekes and Bobs "to be" behavior. When this crew gets together Jim usually catches half the fish that are caught on the boat that day. I don't believe he is that better of a fisherman, he just listens when I explain in the morning how to deploy the baits and how to reel them in. I use circle hooks and the Stripers want the bait in their faces so it is very important to do 4 things the way I explain them. Jim listens and catches fish [while drinking his share of beer]. Now Bob and Zeke are a little different. Last year it was Bob who never got it all day until the last 30 minutes of the trip but today it was all Zeke. If it could go wrong, it happened up in the front of the boat with these two friends. They laughed, told jokes and ragged on each other all day long and had the rest of us in tears. At one point we had all the rods hooked up. One man was throwing up over the boat, I was netting two Stripers in the back of the boat, Zeke was wrestling his fish that got to the other side of the boat while Bob was trying to dig a hook out of my throw net that Zeke hooked into. We banged this school for about 45 minutes before the catfish moved in. It is always a great time fishing with this crew and we always catch fish. Today we caught about 40 to 50 Stripers and 20 Catfish. Way too much fun to pack into just a day of fishing. Good fun with good people.