AllyKat
Angler
Got plenty of exercise this weekend pushing my luck to get out both Saturday and Sunday with friends. Spent friday evening prepping the boat and trying to source enough crabs for the weekend.
We broke the inlet @8am on Sat with 6 aboard. It wasn't as calm as I hoped but we still managed to get across the sound to the CT side with no issues. Spotlock held us in 15 ft of water and the crabs went down. Instant and consistent action for the first hour with 1 keeper at 17" for us. As the tide started to slack near high I moved to a deeper spot and I hooked into a meat submarine on the jig. Fun battle up and down, side to side as the big fish did what it wanted but i managed to keep it from the rocks and flopped the 22 incher on the deck. We had good action there as well until the tide fully quit and slowly switched to outgoing with plenty of 15.5" fish that kept us busy. We went shallow again at 20' and my buddy Rob got tight to a nice bruiser at 20.5" that hit a jig also. So much fun watching these big fish take line and go side to side very fast when we are so used to tog being an up and down game. Eventually the small guys came out and we couldn't find bigger fish in the area, so we went back across to the LI side, passing the fleet at 28C and 11B. With full moon tide, I can only imagine how much lead they were using to hold bottom. Gave a few spots a shot with some decent fish but couldn't find anymore keepers. We did catch a couple of scup and oyster toads as well as a surprise sea robin, which I haven't seen for most of the summer. Still a very nice day with action from start to finish.
Sunday we were 4 on board and were treated to an even nicer day. Flat calm Lake Long Island Sound had us across in no time, dropping baits down by 8am. Back to the same area as saturday, staying in the deeper area and I quickly had an 18 incher in the box. Again, lots of close fish kept us busy until Tommy called for the net, and had a hard time controlling the fish. Up and down, drag pulling runs but he bested the blackfish as I slipped the net under the 21.5" fish. A couple more keepers came up over the next 2 hours as the tide died. One more move as the outgoing started before we called it a day and Billy got tight to another nice fish on his spinner, this one at 20.5" rounded out our 5 fish catch back at the house. Such a nice relaxing ride back with the only waves we encountered were from passing boats.
Gave the boat a well deserved cleaning and already looking ahead to next weekend. Water temps right at 60 degrees.
We broke the inlet @8am on Sat with 6 aboard. It wasn't as calm as I hoped but we still managed to get across the sound to the CT side with no issues. Spotlock held us in 15 ft of water and the crabs went down. Instant and consistent action for the first hour with 1 keeper at 17" for us. As the tide started to slack near high I moved to a deeper spot and I hooked into a meat submarine on the jig. Fun battle up and down, side to side as the big fish did what it wanted but i managed to keep it from the rocks and flopped the 22 incher on the deck. We had good action there as well until the tide fully quit and slowly switched to outgoing with plenty of 15.5" fish that kept us busy. We went shallow again at 20' and my buddy Rob got tight to a nice bruiser at 20.5" that hit a jig also. So much fun watching these big fish take line and go side to side very fast when we are so used to tog being an up and down game. Eventually the small guys came out and we couldn't find bigger fish in the area, so we went back across to the LI side, passing the fleet at 28C and 11B. With full moon tide, I can only imagine how much lead they were using to hold bottom. Gave a few spots a shot with some decent fish but couldn't find anymore keepers. We did catch a couple of scup and oyster toads as well as a surprise sea robin, which I haven't seen for most of the summer. Still a very nice day with action from start to finish.
Sunday we were 4 on board and were treated to an even nicer day. Flat calm Lake Long Island Sound had us across in no time, dropping baits down by 8am. Back to the same area as saturday, staying in the deeper area and I quickly had an 18 incher in the box. Again, lots of close fish kept us busy until Tommy called for the net, and had a hard time controlling the fish. Up and down, drag pulling runs but he bested the blackfish as I slipped the net under the 21.5" fish. A couple more keepers came up over the next 2 hours as the tide died. One more move as the outgoing started before we called it a day and Billy got tight to another nice fish on his spinner, this one at 20.5" rounded out our 5 fish catch back at the house. Such a nice relaxing ride back with the only waves we encountered were from passing boats.
Gave the boat a well deserved cleaning and already looking ahead to next weekend. Water temps right at 60 degrees.
