Made It

After Seth and my big early May fishing adventure we made it into the coastal fisherman! Below is a snapshot of our picture featured in the Ocean City Fishing Report. I especially like the captions!

Father's Day Watermen

The day before Fathers Day marked the 3rd annual Father's Day crabbing trip. We decided to hit the afternoon tides and enjoy some line pullage while we were out. After putting in at Inverness we headed for our most consistent fishing spot, Hawkins Point. There the fish were sparse at first but we managed about 75 perch and pencil rock. Matt out fished Greg and Dad (Glenn) two to one using a perch jerker. Once the next tide rolled around it was time for crabbing. We set our 30 traps with necks and some cut perch we had caught. We ended the day with a nice bushel of heavy fat crabs. On Father's Day we ate them saving the $250-300 bushel cost we as called about the day prior. It was a great time out on the water with our Dad.

Biggest Doormat So Far

Never had we caught more than 1 keeper per trip on the Happy Ours, that all changed on Saturday as we braved a small craft warning. Seth and I started out in theThoroughfare and after many wind aided drifts we hit our first fish a 17.5 inch flounder that hit as we crossed the channel. We weren't ready with the net so I just flipped it over the rail. The next two fish were caught in the East channel which was somewhat protected by the northeast wind. The 23 inch, 4.4 pound fish was pulled up while we slow trolled at during a pause in the tide. We took the bounty to Oyster Bay Tackle shop to be weighed and photographed. They featured us in their fishing report and gallery (shown below).

FINdication

Finally after a few years and several attempts at the spring trophy trolling season, we ended up with a keeper. My dad brought in the 36 inch,big, fat Rockfish. It took out a ton of drag as it pulled on the chartreuse umbrella until it was netted and put in the slush of the cooler. It's tail stuck out of the cooler which made me think that a good boat name would be Tails Out. It defiantly was vindicating catching a keeper after many attempts on the water.

The Keys

We were lucky enough to get down to the Florida Keys this year and stay at the Hawks Cay resort and marina.  "Into the Blue" and "Saltwater Experience", two of my favorite fishing shows are regularly filmed there. We figured our quickly why this was an angler's destination.  In four days, we took out a flats charter on the "Soc-eh tu-em" with Captain Billy, fished a bridge and caught 40 fish and rented a center console and took it out to a reef where we got into another 50 fish.  I estimated that we caught almost 20 species of fish, which all fought HARD and were beautiful.  We even got to stop in the famous World Wide Sportsman full of great saltwater fishing gear and nothing else!  On the last day we even saw both captains from the two fishing shows and Captain Rich Tutor was filming.  I'm excited to see the episode and get down to the Keys again.

Spring 2012 Heavy Metal

 It took a while to get this up but these are pictures from our first attempt at the spring trophy rockfish season in the Spring of 2012.  We bought some new gear and got out on the water 3-4 times.  Unfortunately, we didn't come home with the big one but we did catch some fat 25-26 inchers and a couple of Cownose rays that fouled up our lines.  Hopefully we'll come home with a big boy next spring...can't wait.

Rocking night

It was a great Friday night on Seth's boat. We went out south of the flats after work on Friday and got our limit. The fish were snagged on 1/2 and 3/4 inch silver sided, black topped rattle traps.