8/8/15 - School Lessons

[mwardncsu]

Weather: mid-60's rising to upper 70's, mostly cloudy till late morning, turning over to partly cloudy. Light wind around 5 mph from the NW
Water: 80-81, visibility of several feet
Techniques: Alewifes on downlines (6), 3/8 oz light-lines (2); smallish money-maker gizzard on light-lines (2); some jigging for flukes late day


My son had a friend up at the lake again this weekend, so we planned some striper catching. I went out on Thursday night to catch bait in the drizzle - hit a few lights - some had numbers, some had big bluebacks, etc - and babied them through Friday to be ready for Saturday AM. Overloaded tank of smedium Ales, some moster bluebacks, and a 1/2 dozen money-maker gizzards. <EDIT> I forgot to mention that I got to meet ReelDeal while catching bait - good to meet and do a little group bait catching! I thought I'd be the only fool out in the rain catching bait



Tyler needed a fishing fix, so he came and jumped on with us. We picked him up about 6am and headed out looking for fish. Didn't mark any where I got into the last week - though we were there probably an hour earlier. We checked a few spots, putting bait out a few times before moving to a creek where we got our 1st fish of the day. Actually had the 1st one come off.... probably a white perch, but then Matt's friend Avery got his hands on his 1st striper, with Matt playing Net-man.








Ain't these big bluebacks / alewives purty?



Not long after, Matt got his turn on a downline alewife





SeaJay was in the same general area with his boy and dog.....



We were not marking a lot of fish, so I called my buddy who was on the other side of the lake to see what was going on. He said he was covered up in fish so I did what you know better not to do.... we picked up and made a 15 min run over there....






Dropped off plane and......

Nothing.

We were not marking many at all. Saw a few singles and did see a pod of 6 or 8 on the sidescan but could not get on them. We did see Gator and his friend pulling u-rigs, and had caught a few.


We started to work our way out of the creek towards the main channel, and started seeing more..... saw these two come up and look at our bait - or maybe the massive bait cloud around our baits...



We finally started marking some good number of fish, and a downline got hit and Matt grabbed it to reel, then the fish came off..... soon to find out that somehow we had 4 downrods woven into the worst mess I've ever seen.



I spend a long while getting that sorted, while Avery picked up a nice largemouth.


We moved on out in the channel a bit further and saw some fish so setout again - starting to fight the wind....... only to get the downlines tangled up AGAIN. Never had such a mess with downlines once - much less several times in a day...... then my buddy Mark starts calling to get over where he was - he was on a pile of fish.... as I'm retying crap again....

I forget when, but we had a light line get slammed and Matt brought the biggest fish of the day to the boat - around 8 lbs and 29"




This is where the School Lesson started...... we found the school - but they wanted nothing to do with our baits - but Mark was a jigging fool. I blame it on the fact that Matt was talking trash to Mark after he caught that 29" fish and Mark hadn't gotten any while we were over there. Well, Mark showed Matt why you don't talk trash







We did finally get one more on bait - though Tyler had switched teams and joined team-jigging and managed to bring up two on the fluke.



We called it around 11 or 11:30 and headed to the dock...... had fish to clean....

[BentRod]

Thanks for the trip Captain Tangles! Team jigging is funner than downrods!

Clearly I was still drunk from last night - I don't even remember drinking last night....

[lund1]

Mike - It's funny...I've been meaning to ask you how the heck to fish multiple down rods without getting all tangled up! Seriously...whats the rod pattern? shallow in the bow and descending as you move to the stern? Or visa versa?

Regardless of the tangles, your son Matt must love bringing his buddies on the boat knowing his old man is gonna put them on fish. Just think of the rush a kid gets when he climbs on board and simply stares into the bait tank! I guarantee you the general consensus is "Dude...your dad is awesome..."

[mwardncsu]

Well - Matt was quite the comedian today - another of his one-liners - "dad if we put out bait we might actually catch a fish". You know, I stress about it every time until that first fish are two are in the boat - I never feel it's a sure thing - just try to put as many things to my advantage as possible to help with success.

As to the downlines - honestly I usually just fish them however - random mix of depths. Typically fish 6 (3/side) without issue I think today two or three things combined for problems:
1) fishing a bit deeper - 40-50 a lot of time vs 20-30 - more line to potentially tangle
2) speed and direction control - the wind had me faster (swinging baits further back) and slower than I wanted at times
3) mix of weights. A few had 1.5 oz - other 2 oz. Need the lighter weights in the back as they will swing further back. Not sure we had all the heavier weights forward


I'll get some light lines tangled at times - but never had such issue with downlines. Maybe Gator has retrained my stringer to tangle up my lines to run me off the Blackwater and back to the Roanoke

[Deleted]

This pic made me smile....

kinda reminds me of those kia soul hamsters.   .... Sriper Mafia gangsta!!!!!

[Gator]

Nice to see you on the dark side. Glad the boys were able to have some fun. It was pretty slow for me....although we did manage a few. I never marked a decent school just scattered fish and picked away at them.

[mwardncsu]

For those of you on Facebook - there is Facebook page that posts lots of fishing related images/sayings..... they also sell some cool stickers and such through their website. If you have a Facebook account in addition to Fishbook it's work checking out. www.facebook.com/respectthefish


Last week when we were talking about going out this weekend or what, Tyler mentioned how he wasn't in to the downline fishing, but getting out on the water helped with his sanity. Now judging from some of those pics in my report - perhaps he needs more fishing time....



Saw this one this morning...... very true.... yesterday had some lessons learned, some fish caught and memories made......

[psuhntr]

Nice write up. I enjoyed reading it.