Took a good friend out today to Niantic. I decided to do the shad drifting thing with him as he is recovering from neck surgery and can't take any pounding so drifting would be the order of the day. We launched about 7:00 am. and went about catching our bait. The shad have definitely become more difficult to find and catch since July but I managed to find em' and we caught what we needed. The only problem is it took a very long time to get enough and while trying to catch them the ones we already had didn't last long. We ended up doing two bait runs and were able to keep enough alive to put some fish in the boat. I hooked and landed three nice 40"+ fish right away but Derrick was having a bit of a hard time hooking up. We later figured out he was not using enough weight with his new 30 lb. mono to keep him on the bottom. He added more weight and was hooked up in no time. His first fish was 27.5 lbs. 44". Then it slowed down drastically, we hung in there and I am glad we did becaue as the tide slowed Derrick hooked up again and I knew immediately he was into a good fish. I told him "Dude that's a big fish take your time" he was pretty juiced up about the fish so I kept him calm and told him to enjoy it. He did and a short time later he gets a look at the fish and I thought he was going to crap his drawers. He was so ecstatic you can not believe it. I was pretty jazzed as well, I wanted him to get a big fish really bad, he has not had much chance to fish this year so I wanted to get him into some of the big fish we have been getting this year. Well mission accomplished, fish measured 46" and weighed 40 lbs. and man was this thing fat. We tried in vain to revive and release but the fish was not going to make it so he took it home to show his young boy's and filet it for his mother and father to eat. It really was a slow day for Bartletts but we managed some real nice fish and Derrick caught his personal best bass. That makes 5 people this year on the boat who have bested their biggest fish ever by landing fish much bigger than any they ever got before. I am very proud of that achievement and this will go down as my personal best year ever of bass fishing for big fish. Going out again on Wed. not sure where yet but there's always bartletts if nothing else works out.
Tightlines,
Mike M.
P.S. Just to keep things on the up and up we went to another local reef for the outgoing tide and flyfished only. We managed a few small bass and a couple of blues on the long rods so it wasn't just a meat day. When I figure out how to false cast a 17" Hickory Shad I will be the next flyfishing legend:hehe:
Tightlines,
Mike M.
P.S. Just to keep things on the up and up we went to another local reef for the outgoing tide and flyfished only. We managed a few small bass and a couple of blues on the long rods so it wasn't just a meat day. When I figure out how to false cast a 17" Hickory Shad I will be the next flyfishing legend:hehe: