A Beautiful Morning on the Lake

Rob, Kevin, Jim and Eric

Sunny and Pleasant, Water Temperature 58* 

This morning I got out early and caught bait then picked my guys up at 7. I wanted to get a few "special" baits so I ran up and wasted 30  minutes looking for them but never found any so we went fishing. I wanted to work a shallow flat so I started deploying my boards over deep water with the intentions of having a spread of a dozen boards out when I hit the flat. As I was putting the second board out I went to hook the board on the line and a fish jammed the bait. I went to rebait it and the first one got hit. I finally got two out and yet another board got hit but did not hook up. By the time I got to the flat I wanted to work I only had 5 or 6 lines out. The board up on the bank hooked up and Eric jumped on the rod. After fighting the fish for a minute we boat it and it happened to be the first and largest fish of the morning. I continued to try to get my set out but the fish would not let me. I turned around and went deeper in order to get my spread out then hit the flat without a strike! As we worked the flat we noticed a school of Stripers exploding on the surface  a couple hundred yards behind us and they followed us for about 400 yards. Apparently I was in the school originally then lost it when I turned around then my timing got screwed up. We continued for about a mile hitting other flats and catching occasional fish. By 9 I wanted to go try to get some more baits so we tried but did not have any success. We then hit the inside edges of some flats with no luck then moved out to the outer edges and started hooking up with regularity. We continued to hook up until we had to get off the water so a couple of the guys could hop on a plane to go to work. Although we caught 23 Stripers this morning we only had 11 keepers.