May

25 May Foggy bite

Monday’s trip was tough. We saw lots of fish when we first hit the flats but they wouldn’t commit to our plugs so we decided to head up river and chase pike instead. That went well but the stripers were really bothering me… I talked to my group for Tuesday and convinced them to meet me earlier in hopes that we would do better in the dark. Mike and Bill met me just after 4 at the ramp and we headed south. Launching early paid off on the first few casts when Bill hooked up

It was a steady pick of fish with afew good ones in the mix, top waters drew the most strikes. We never moved more than 100 yards from the fish, staying with them all morning. It was nice being cloaked in the fog and having them all to ourselves. They were in a very concentrated area and easy to find on the Humminbird side imaging. That was definitely was key in staying with them. As you can see in the screen shot here, there were tons of fish on the flat!

stripers-on-the-flats

We had several other fish in the same area, most of them just over keeper sized. Sometime around 5 the for rolled in from the south and visibilty dropped off to nothing. I knew it would be a good morning at then, the bass would stay shallow and as long as we could stay stealthy on the trolling motor we could get them to eat. Big wooden spooks were working well. It can be tough to get the cadence down, but once you master that rythmic walk the dog, the bass found them irresistable. Mike hooked up on a good fish. They sure fight great in 3 feet of water…

The top water bite lasted for a few hours with some real quality fish in the mix:

It was inevitable that the blues would eventually show up. Most were small, but there were also some bruisers in the mix. Mike had a monster on a spook. This one took a good 5 minutes to finally boat.