Wednesday morning we woke up at 3:45 am and headed for the harbor. The forecast called for bright sunny skies so we knew the morning topwater bite would not last nearly as long as it did the day before. Its funny how only the second day ever of commercial striped bass fishing for me and I am already an expert on all things striped bass... Self-proclaimed, but thats basically how I operate. I am a quick learner, ask a million questions, and retain every bit of fishing related intel.
The topwater bite lasted for only the first 30 minutes of light, and then the stripers moved out into deeper water...When the bite is on for topwater, you dont waste any time taking pictures. Here are some photos after the topwater bite was over and the sun was shining:
Then we headed out to deeper water to jig fish for them. Was a great new learning experience to jig for stripers in 80 feet of water. Basically in freshwater fishing you have to keep the bait in the strike zone for as long as possible to be successful. Freshwater fish need all the help they can get to bite your bait. In saltwater its the complete opposite! If you want to catch lots of saltwater fish you need to briefly show your bait in the strike zone and then real it away as fast as humanly possible to get them to come chase and strike! Goes against everything in my nature, but just drop the diamond jig down to the bottom and then rip and reel it up as aggressively and lightning fast as you can. If you dont get one to bite, than drop it down and do it again. The faster you go the more bites you get.
We had a ball jigging stripers! Big fish after big fish:
Once we started catching fish, every boat within 5 miles started congregating into the hot spot. The schools of stripers would move around and so would all the boats:
Occasionally if you would keep your jig down near the bottom too long a small shark would eat your bait. I brought one into the boat for a picture. He was grinning from ear to ear to get his photo taken!
This boat had all three of their anglers hook up all at the same time! Kind of cool. We had lots of doubles, but never could get a triple. You might have to click on the picture to see it better.
So we stayed out on the water as late as possible, but had to catch an evening flight out of Boston. We jumped in the car and rushed straight to the airport and had just enough time to grab a terribly overpriced chinese meal at the airport before loading onto the plane. We even didn't order drinks with the meal cause that would of costed an extra $6.18 plus tax for the both of us and that was for water or soda.
That chinese meal costed $22.36 without drinks. That same exact, only better tasting meal here in Central Illinois would of costed $12.50! Probably was green, organic, natural east coast chinese. Its no wonder everyone out there is skinny and cranky! Their food (except their lobsters and striped bass) is terrible and overpriced.
Anyhow we made the plane and got back to Midway and I was home sleeping in my own bed at 1:10 am. I had to shower though first, cause boy did I stink riding home on the plane with fish slime and even a few scales on my clothes!!
Being up from 3:30 am and jampacking a full day of fishing and traveling all the way till 1 am sure makes a guy tired. I am going to need to go on a vacation just to recoup from this vacation. Instead I had the priviledge of answering voice mails and emails all day long. My customer service was terrific today, but for some reason I didn't make very many sales?? Sir your pond is fine, quit worrying so much and scoop up your dead fish! Sheesh, thats like the fifth time you left a voice message......
BTW, FYI, (Im getting good at texting codes, might as well start applying them to the blog). Anyhow fish are dying all over across the state of Illinois. Many ponds just aren't geared to handle this hot of weather for this long with no relief even at nighttime. Rain and cold fronts that do come only make things worse and thats usually when a big fish kill will happen. Several hot hot days in a row followed by a cold front or rain storm. On a serious note, if your fish are dying, give me a call and I can help figure out exactly what happened and ways to remedy the problem for the here and now as well as ways to help fix the problem for the future.
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