Weekday Trip

Two More Species Checked Off the List

I took the day off last Thursday to see if I could beat the crowds and catch a limit of Spade Fish, because once the word gets out that these fish have arrived at the “Tower” (Chesapeake Light Tower), everyone, and I mean everyone flocks to the Tower on the weekends to fight these tasty critters. To top it off, they are a whole lot of fun to catch. You see, pound for pound these guys provide some serious pullage. Not only will they wear your arms out after catching a half dozen of them, they can flat out destroy a second rate reel.

Problem with fishing during the week is trying to find someone to fish with you. Fortunately, I’m of the age that I now have friends in the retirement community. My regular Ho (Bill) falling into that category. Now before anyone takes offense to the word “Ho”, let me assure you it’s not meant as an insult. This is a label adopted in our local fishing community over the years for people that primarily fish on other peoples boats. Kind of like Mate. Although I’m not sure how they relate. After all, a Ho, in its original definition, is someone that’s paid for a special type of service-- yes? A boat Ho isn’t paid. He/she meets you at the boat, loads up their gear and then spends the day fishing with you. Furthermore, a boat Ho that expects to be invited back will usually offer to split the cost associated with the days fishing. A really good boat Ho will bring food and drink for the Capt and all boat Ho’s are expected to help with the clean-up duties at the end of the day.

So now that we all know what a Ho means to the local fishing community, I’ll continue with the better-late-than-never report from our trip last Thursday. We launched the boat around 9am at the Crab Creek ramp in Virginia Beach. On the way to the Tower, we decided to troll around the Cape for some Blue Fish to be used later in the day for Flounder bait. We caught 3 Blues and 1 legal Spanish Mackerel then picked up our lines and made the run out to the Tower. That, by the way, was the first Spanish Mackerel caught on the new boat. One more species to cross off my list http://members.cox.net/brarnold/Species%20List.doc in my quest to catch one of every local species before the end of the year. Off to the Tower.

After pushing our way through a heavy sea, dropping at least once, off the top of a nice 6 foot swell, we arrive to find maybe 14 boats anchored around the Tower. We picked us a spot and dropped anchor. After 4 or 5 unsuccessful attempts at sticking the anchor, we finally get a good set and we settle in for some fun.

It took a little while but after watching other boats catching, we finally hooked up. However, not before switching out the rig I was using for one with a long, fluorocarbon leader. I now have another species to scratch off my list.

Bill wasn’t doing as well. I kept telling him to switch over to the fluorocarbon leader but he’s a stubborn old coot. He finally caught a couple fish but I really believe the visibility, or in my case, invisibility of the fluorocarbon made the difference. After all, the water was extremely clear.

After playing around with the Spade Fish for a few hours we decided to drift a few wrecks sunken around the Tower area to see if we could boat any keeper Sea Bass. While there were plenty of Sea Bass to catch, only one made the length legal to keep. We ended the day searching for a Striper and then a legal Flounder. Didn’t do all that well on either, so we loaded the boat and headed home.

I almost forgot. As you may or may not know, we have a very active military presence here in SE Virginia and they often are found performing maneuvers in much of the same locations we anglers like to play. Here are a couple pictures of two Navy Seal go-fast boats that decided to take a high-speed lap out to the tower and back to shore.

An impressive craft for sure, but not much for fishing.

After cleaning the boat and cleaning the fish, which by the way, always seems to take the same amount of time no matter how many fish we catch. You see, Bill, while being a professional boat Ho, is also a master at filleting fish, so he heads to my fish cleaning table while I start washing the boat. Once he’s done cleaning fish, I’d expect that he help finish up with the boat. Whether we bring home 2 fish or 2 dozen fish, he always seems to finish cleaning our catch about the same time I finish with the boat. Yeah, I know! Strange coincidence isn’t it?

My neighbor tried to get a picture of Bill one night on one of the extremely rare trips where we didn’t catch anything that could be kept. It was rumored that Bill had a rag in his hand and was wiping down the boat. Wouldn’t you know it, the picture came out blank.

So that’s the trip. Nothing overly exciting happened this day. We didn’t have any notable mishaps to report. Just a nice day on the water doing what we love. Now I will be boat-less for the next week or two while she’s in for service and warranty work. I’ve been offered rides on other boats while mine is in the shop so it looks like I’ll be changing rolls from Captain to temporary boat Ho for a while. If so, I’ll be sure to post the results.

Weekend Fishing Report

The Crew:

• Capt. Bill
• Kerry
• Dave (Mr. Whiteboots)
• and myself

The Boat: The Attitude
Target Fish: Sea Bass

After watching the Marine Weather-Guessers forecast all week long, we assembled a crew to once again go hunt Black Sea Bass. This time, a little further off-shore. With forecasts all week long of low winds and relatively calm seas for Sunday, I was looking forward to a nice smooth ride within 50 miles of the shoreline. Of course, come Saturday, the Weatherguessers started tweaking the forecast. It’s almost as if the Weatherguessers are in cahoots with all of the businesses that count on weekend tourists, weekend anglers, campers, boaters, surfers, sun worshipers and fare-weather shoppers.

Before you say “that’s just crazy talk”, think about it! I’m not normally one of those conspiracy theorist types, but I can’t think of any other reason why Weatherguessers start off the first half of every week with an upcoming weekend forecast of beautiful, sunny and in my case, low wind and low seas forecast. Then some time between Thursday afternoon and very early Saturday morning, after all the plans are made and all the reservations are set, the forecast goes to crap. Too late! The plans are set, the reservations are made and in many cases, deposits have been paid. See what I mean?

Enough of that crazy talk. I think I’m going to work on a post specifically on the subject of Weatherguessers, their accuracy and what might be done to incentivize or otherwise motivate them to develop tools that make them much more accurate. Any and all suggestions are welcome! More to come.

On to the report: As commented on above, the Saturday morning forecast had changed and the small craft advisory had been extended into Saturday night. Not to worry. It was to be lifted by 1am Sunday morning. Another check Saturday night found the small craft advisory had not been lifted, but surprise! It had been extended to 6am Sunday morning. However, the sea-state prediction was only calling for 3 to 4 foot seas with an 8 second period and winds were out of the SW. If nothing else, we could stay closer to land. Either way it should be manageable and it was supposed to get even nicer as the morning progressed.

Fast forward to 6am Sunday morning. I have 2 neighbors in my driveway and one other crew member that drives 2 hours from Richmond, waiting for a fishing trip. Boat’s hooked up to the truck, fish boxes are both loaded with ice. Lunch, drinks, tackle and rods are all onboard so we’re not going to disappoint. After all, why did I buy this new boat if I can’t handle a 4 foot sea? We head to the ramp.

When we get to the ramp 2 other boats were sitting in front of them, still on their trailers. Seems one of them, a little Sea Hunt, had tried to make it to the tower but gave up, turned around and came back in. The other guy, hearing the Sea Hunt's story, decided not to launch. We however, continued on. I figured, what the heck, let’s at least stick the bow out past the jetty and see for ourselves. Let me tell you, my big - little Sailfish did right-well (that’s Southern speak for she did a great job) in the 4 to 6 foot rollers.

We made our way out averaging 25mph. Not a bad ride. It really wasn't that bad since the swell was spaced pretty nicely. After a 20 mile run, our destination was confirmed, first by the arrival signal from my GPS and then again as we watch the outline of a long ago sunken wreck-tuned-fish-heaven on my digital fishfinder screen. We caught Sea Bass steady all day and on every piece of structure we visited. Unfortunately we only had 19 keepers for the day. Well, 20, but I let one of them buggers slip out of my hand. I’m pretty sure it stuck it’s tongue out at me as it hit the water and quickly swam away. Biggest fish of the day was somewhere between 3 and 4 pounds. We caught and released another 30 or so that were too short to keep and I put tags in an even dozen.

As usual, there’s always something that happens on a long fishing trip. A blunder, a hatch dropping on a foot, a hook stuck in someone’s hand or an exploding beer. On this trip, it was a little thing called ‘Sea sickness’. Yes, one of my crew was going the extra mile to help chum up the fish. I won’t “out” the poor guy, but I will say it wasn’t me!!! :-) He got quite a bit of ribbing from at least one other member of the crew. Me, I learned my lesson a long, long time ago. I was fishing out of San Diego with an old friend, oh, close to 30 years ago. We had a couple guys on board and one of them started tossing up breakfast. Boy did I give him a hard time. Well, it was no more than an hour or two later, I found myself hanging over the side. So, since then, with the exception of a few times aboard ship, I don’t rib fellow fishermen.

Well, if you've gotten this far in the post, thanks for reading. Feel free to provide comments, your own outdoors story or any helpful suggestions.. Especially if they have something to do with improving marine forecasting. Just click on the 'comments' tag below.