Two bucks of a lifetime from property just 3 miles apart - in one season. And the season still has a month and a half left in it. Most hunters go a lifetime and never see bucks like this afield and here I sit with two of them. Someone pinch me because I must be sound asleep. I won’t bore you with a long story. Suffice to say this one was more luck than the last. One of our dogs pushed him out of the cutover and into a finger of woods I was waiting in. He jumped the creek then quickly slammed on the brakes when he saw me standing just 30 feet away with a shotgun pointing at him. I can’t stop thinking about the look in his face. It was one of “Oh crap! This ain’t gonna turn out well” And it didn’t. One quick shot and it was all over. Here are a couple more pictures.
I get home around 10pm Saturday night knowing I have 3 guys showing up at 7am Sunday morning to go fishing offshore. So I take a shower and a few motrin then head to bed. 6am the alarm goes off and up I go again. Guys show up at 7, I hook the boat up to the truck and we’re off. Our plan was to fish the Triangles about 35 miles offshore for 10 to 15lb Blue Fish and we also wanted to get a mess of Sea Bass. Flounder were also a possibility.
Water was a little rough from the winds of the last couple days but we made our way out running 20kts. Once we got to the Tower (roughly 14 miles out) we decided to take a rest and fish some of the wrecks. Good move since we were catching a number of legal Sea Bass. When that slowed, we continued on our way to the Triangles when 2 of my crew noticed a beehive of birds about a mile off my starboard beam. They also noticed some commotion on the water that turned out to be 3 Sperm(?) Whales circling schools of fish for breakfast. I tell you what, between the Whales, Striper and Blue Fish, this isn’t a good time to be a bait fish. One can only imagine the carnage that takes place under water.
So anyway, we start marking schools of nice fish and begin to jig from the bottom up. Most of the time our jigs never reached the bottom as either a big Blue Fish or a nice Striper would grab it and the fight was on. We must of caught and released 15 quality Striper and came home with, I think, 10 Blue Fish between 8 and 14lbs for the smoker. We also got a number of nice Sea Bass and my buddy “White Boots Dave” jigged up a Flounder that was just an inch shy of taking a ride in our fishbox.
So that’s it. No pictures since I forgot my camera and of course, the crew kept reminding me of that fact, especially when the Whales showed up. All-in-all an exceptional weekend.
