My younger son Charles and I made one last trip for the season yesterday and it turned out to be one of the best trips of the year.
We put the boat in the water at Milford boat ramp, the tide was extremely high and made launching the boat difficult but we managed.
I was a little worried about the motor , with what happened on our last trip, fired the motor up and it was idling fine, off we go.
Bunker were everywhere finning themselves from the launch to Middle Ground, just amazing how much bait.
Coming out of the harbor my son at the helm said to me here goes nothing and advanced the throttle to which the motor jumped up on plain and we were running at 4 thousand rpms.
We headed to Middle Ground for one last shot at tog, water was like a lake and seeing the fins from the bunker everywhere was something I never seen before.
When we arrived at our destination found a few boats in deep water, no one was fishing the shallow water, so we found 50' of water that looked promising.
We only had asian crabs because all the tackle shops around us were out of green crabs, although we had frozen crabs from our last trip, they didn't get bit all that much.
We started out catching small tog to 14" and it was frustrating because we were going through our supply of asians pretty fast.
We moved around a few times but it just wasn't meant to be, so one final move was in order so we decided to move into shallower water, I use the anchor ball retrieval system.
Moving forward to bring my anchor up the ball almost disappeared and we came tight, crap, I have never lost an anchor, we were very close to a boat that was maybe 50 feet away and they watched and laughed as we tried to get our anchor loose, after several attempts and stretching the rope to half its size, I was ready to join the the lost anchor club.
My son started to pull on the rope in an attempt that maybe pulling straight up would do the trick, that not working I tried one more time, nope, no luck.
The ball was under water when I backed off for the last time, all of a sudden the ball pops up to the surface and my son starts to pull in our anchor line.
Well I guess we weren't the first to get hung up in that area because attached to my anchor was another anchor line, I said to my son, figures, we retrieved over 75 feet of the nastiest
rope I've ever seen, I thought at first it was an old lobster pot line, but we will never know, as we came tight on the rope we could not pull it up, so we cut it and disposed of the rope when we got back to the ramp.
At that point with the lack of fish and it looked like it was going to rain we headed in, I setup 2 spinning rods one with a deadly dick and one with a white bucktail with an otter tail just
in case we saw some birds working.
My son at the helm again, we were approaching Charles island when my son made a sharp turn to port, fish were breaking the surface and we approached with caution.
I was using the deadly dick and my first cast I hook up, not knowing what I had, I assumed it was a blue fish, when it didn't surface and stayed down I started thinking bass,
as I was getting my fish close to the boat my son hooks up, I get me fish to the boat, it's a bass, lifted the fish into the boat for a quick measurement, 31" specimen and back over he went.
I took the deadly disk off and put on a bucktail setup and proceed to hook up again, we were into a big school, all the fish we caught were over 28 " the largest being 35".
We were the only boat there for awhile until someone else saw us hooking up, then out of nowhere 5 boats showed up, we continued to catch and release for another half hour then it was over.
Together we caught over 25 fish to 35", what a way to end our season, I caught more bass in that hour and a half than I did in the last five years.
We should have just stayed around Charles Island all day, talking to one of the other boats, they said the fishing were popping up between stratford light to Charles island.
The water temp was 54.5 degrees at middleground and 54. 9 around Charles island.
My season was not a great one, with mechanical problems and lack of fluke in the sound,weather ,wind you name it, but the last day on the water made it all worthwhile, my HPDI is running great again.
We opened it up headed into milford harbor and she didn't skip a beat, I'm a happy camper.
Today I'm prepping the boat for it's winter storage.
Here's to a better year not just fishing but hopefully as a Nation we can recover from this pandemic and the political bs that has this country divided.
I lost my job Friday do to the pandemic, when I got home yesterday there was a registered letter waiting for me from the Bridgeport Board of Education .
I have been laid off do to a reduction in my classification as Network Engineer, thanks for your service and good luck in your future endeavors.
I was going to retire this coming June so they just eliminated my job forcing me to retire early.
Now I will have no excuse when fishing season starts next year. lol
Tight lines everyone, I don't think the bass fishing is over quite yet.
Stay healthy and Safe.
Jay
We put the boat in the water at Milford boat ramp, the tide was extremely high and made launching the boat difficult but we managed.
I was a little worried about the motor , with what happened on our last trip, fired the motor up and it was idling fine, off we go.
Bunker were everywhere finning themselves from the launch to Middle Ground, just amazing how much bait.
Coming out of the harbor my son at the helm said to me here goes nothing and advanced the throttle to which the motor jumped up on plain and we were running at 4 thousand rpms.
We headed to Middle Ground for one last shot at tog, water was like a lake and seeing the fins from the bunker everywhere was something I never seen before.
When we arrived at our destination found a few boats in deep water, no one was fishing the shallow water, so we found 50' of water that looked promising.
We only had asian crabs because all the tackle shops around us were out of green crabs, although we had frozen crabs from our last trip, they didn't get bit all that much.
We started out catching small tog to 14" and it was frustrating because we were going through our supply of asians pretty fast.
We moved around a few times but it just wasn't meant to be, so one final move was in order so we decided to move into shallower water, I use the anchor ball retrieval system.
Moving forward to bring my anchor up the ball almost disappeared and we came tight, crap, I have never lost an anchor, we were very close to a boat that was maybe 50 feet away and they watched and laughed as we tried to get our anchor loose, after several attempts and stretching the rope to half its size, I was ready to join the the lost anchor club.
My son started to pull on the rope in an attempt that maybe pulling straight up would do the trick, that not working I tried one more time, nope, no luck.
The ball was under water when I backed off for the last time, all of a sudden the ball pops up to the surface and my son starts to pull in our anchor line.
Well I guess we weren't the first to get hung up in that area because attached to my anchor was another anchor line, I said to my son, figures, we retrieved over 75 feet of the nastiest
rope I've ever seen, I thought at first it was an old lobster pot line, but we will never know, as we came tight on the rope we could not pull it up, so we cut it and disposed of the rope when we got back to the ramp.
At that point with the lack of fish and it looked like it was going to rain we headed in, I setup 2 spinning rods one with a deadly dick and one with a white bucktail with an otter tail just
in case we saw some birds working.
My son at the helm again, we were approaching Charles island when my son made a sharp turn to port, fish were breaking the surface and we approached with caution.
I was using the deadly dick and my first cast I hook up, not knowing what I had, I assumed it was a blue fish, when it didn't surface and stayed down I started thinking bass,
as I was getting my fish close to the boat my son hooks up, I get me fish to the boat, it's a bass, lifted the fish into the boat for a quick measurement, 31" specimen and back over he went.
I took the deadly disk off and put on a bucktail setup and proceed to hook up again, we were into a big school, all the fish we caught were over 28 " the largest being 35".
We were the only boat there for awhile until someone else saw us hooking up, then out of nowhere 5 boats showed up, we continued to catch and release for another half hour then it was over.
Together we caught over 25 fish to 35", what a way to end our season, I caught more bass in that hour and a half than I did in the last five years.
We should have just stayed around Charles Island all day, talking to one of the other boats, they said the fishing were popping up between stratford light to Charles island.
The water temp was 54.5 degrees at middleground and 54. 9 around Charles island.
My season was not a great one, with mechanical problems and lack of fluke in the sound,weather ,wind you name it, but the last day on the water made it all worthwhile, my HPDI is running great again.
We opened it up headed into milford harbor and she didn't skip a beat, I'm a happy camper.
Today I'm prepping the boat for it's winter storage.
Here's to a better year not just fishing but hopefully as a Nation we can recover from this pandemic and the political bs that has this country divided.
I lost my job Friday do to the pandemic, when I got home yesterday there was a registered letter waiting for me from the Bridgeport Board of Education .
I have been laid off do to a reduction in my classification as Network Engineer, thanks for your service and good luck in your future endeavors.
I was going to retire this coming June so they just eliminated my job forcing me to retire early.
Now I will have no excuse when fishing season starts next year. lol
Tight lines everyone, I don't think the bass fishing is over quite yet.
Stay healthy and Safe.
Jay
