What was your best bite in 2001?
 

What was your best bite last season?

Was it a big cow striper that doubled over your rod and emptied your reel?

Was it a tuna that almost ripped the rod out of your hands?

Maybe it was tog trauma, when a huge white-chinner went dive-dive-dive for his rocky little hidey-hole.

Perhaps it was the pull of a pollack?

Did you freak on a fluke?

Did you have any memorable hits, strikes, bites, smacks or near misses of special note in 2001. It doesn't have to be the biggest fish of your lifetime...maybe the bluefish that pulled your unattended rod off the boat?

For me, the best bite was one I saw fish_eye to fish eye. This maniac mako was frantically chasing down a chunk of bluefish that was being quickly hauled back into the boat. It couldn't resist the old "take away" and it came flying in out of the deep to intercept this offering just 15 feet away -- right in front of me and the camera.

http://fisheye.striped-bass.com/imag...tewmako600.jpg


What's your story?

The best bite of 2001 was not one of mine but that of my next door neighbors teenage son. He has been doing some freshwater fishing but had not been salt till one day I saw him in his yard staring at my boat as I pulled out of the yard to go out by my self for a few hours. I could not leave the lad there so I invited him along. He had his gear and was in the truck before I could blink. We went to a small reef off West Island that always has schoolies but not a lot of keepers. Well his first cast was at least 10 ' and I asked if he could use some help just as a nice keeper took his lure and headed for places unknown. The look on his face and the smile at the end of the fight and the release of the bass made that the best bite of 2001. He is now hooked just like all of us were right after that first and best bite.:cheers:

The one that got away
 

It was late september of 2001 I had just finished a days work. So like everyday before I stop home say hello grab my pluggin rod and jump in the car down to colt state park to kill some time catch some blues and talk to the regulars who I have got to know very well over the past 8 years. I see my friend frank down there with his girl and he was having fun with some skip jacks. of course me being a wise a$$ decides to poke fun at him and his skip jacks. So i grab my rod throw on a popper and start pluggin away. I am chewing the fat with my him when he hooks another skip jack it was about 10" in length. He was about 3 feet to the right of me and I look at his skipjack and laugh that its more than I caught today. So he throws it back in the drink as he threw it in the water what looked to be a 20lb+ striper came up and swollowed it!!!!(the tail on this striper was about 7") I was bringing in my popper at the same time about 5 feet out in front and the striper hits my plug!!!!! I get all nervous pull up the rod to set the hook the fish was in less than 2 feet of water there was more fish than water I have the fish on he starts to shake his head and turn for the open water me being an idiot trys to horse him in 3 seconds later he spit the plug back at me. It was a heartbreaker. I tried untill just after dusk and nothing. That all happened about 3 feet in front of us!!!! So me and frank decide to come back later on during the night and fish the current with some pogy chunks. So we set up and it was about 9PM we sat there without a bite for over an hour. All of a sudden out of no where my Baitrunners drag comes to life and starts to sing! I grab my rod wait 1 sec flip the handle and set the hook. It was a good hookset. One problem........ I don't think the fish even felt the tension of the drag it was like i never shut the BR's secondary drag off. He is taking line at an alarming rate I start getting very nervous and excited I decide I better do something to slow him down so I tightened the drag as much as I dared and begin pumping the rod in hopes of slowing the fish down. It doesn't even slow him down I am hoping the fish turns soon becuase I started running low on line on my reel all of a sudden the line went dead I reeled in the slack as quick as possible............ nothing there. I reel in my rig to find no bait and an empty hook. It probably would have been the biggest striper of my life it was gone. I was so disgusted I kept thinking of where I went wrong I figured not lettin him run tighting the drag or pumping the rod could have contributed to my loss. Then again he could have scraped it off on the bottom. I will never know.... It still haunts me till today. I ended up settling for a 34" bass that night but it really didn't matter all that much..... All I wanted was another chance on that fish I lost...........:crying: :crying: :crying:

Best fish of the year came in October on my first trip ever to a Cape Cod beach at night. I've fished the canal for ten years, but never really got into fishing the beach but was prodded by my brother to give it a try. I was casting eels at 2:15 am and I must have hit this fish in the head with the eel, cause as soon as the eel hit the water I felt the hit. The fish did not want to stop and I thought I was going to be spooled, the fish finally stopped and turned. After a short while I managed to get her near shore and realized the size of the fish and that I had to work with the surf to land this fish. The fish gods were smiling on me as they produced a nice wave that pushed the fish onto the beach. The fish was 48" and 35.5lbs. Not bad for my first fish on the beach! :happy: I will be back for more!

Had an excellent time fishing buckeyes with Clamdigger and John one night last spring. We went for hours with both of them getting hits and fish and I don't even get a bump. Finally it starts to bust loose for me and I'm getting hits on live ones and dead ones as fast as I can cast 'em.

The best time had to be THE big fishing trip when Clamdigger took my 4 year old and I out fluking. The smiles when the sea robins ("I LOVE sea robins" he says, even though he never saw one before) came over the side made the day.

All in all I had some great times fishing, exploring and tackle building last year as a result of the connections and friendships I have made through John's efforts here at Striped-Bass.com:happy:

Captain Bottom, wlecome aboard :btu:

Wow - where to start? Best Bite - huh?

I guess that would be the first time my son tried to bite me. Bad habbit but I was shocked & suprised when it happened ;)....

Other than that, not many decent fish this year, a few bass in the high twenty pound range from shore. I did get my largest November fish of 28lbs in the middle of November - who said global warming is a bad thing?

I had a good bite I remember in Chatham in June . On the long walk it seemed every cast of a habs olive needlefish had a fish on no real monsters just continuous action . Totaled around 30 fish all rockets . No award winning fish none over 30 this year but I came real close (28#) .

I went out to Cuttyhunk and was chunking stripers at Pigs and Sows. After no longer than 5 minutes my reel started to srcream and line was flying off. Went through 100 yards of wire down to the backing. The hook was set good and a began to pumop the rod. I knew it was a HUGE fish. As the fish got closer I could see it on the fish finder and it looked to be at least 5 feet long. All I coudl think of was that this very well could be a record fish and I better stay smart and frosty. I got the fish to the boat and was holding the leader in my hand when it took off again and stripped off at around 40 yards of wire. This happened 2 more times over the course of 25 minutes. The fight was begining to draw a crowd as a few guys drifted over to see the action. Finally after 35 minutes fo fighting I got it to the boat and my buddy grabbed the leader and I grabed the gaff. Up from the depths came the biggest skate I ever saw. What a disapointment. We pulled it up to the boat and released it. I was a bummer to realize it was not a trophy stiper on the other hand for 30 minutes or so I was on a 70 lber, a very good feeling even if it was not accurate. Can't wait till next season. :hihi:

It would be easy for me to say that my first 30lber was most memorable... 33lb 4oz... but looking back, its not the first thing that pops into my mind.

I think it was June and I was having a really crappy week at work (and at home if I remember correctly) and I cut out of work early one day to forget about everything and get some fish. I waded out onto my favorite schoolie flat and started working a slug-o. I caught a few small fish, missed a few... nothing great and apparently, not enough to relax.

I was crabby and tense and not having much fun.

On one of my final casts, with the lure almost all the way back, a nice bass exploded on my slug-o and took off down-current, suddenly it switched directions and when it turned, my lure pulled and flew back at me and over my head. At the same time the fish thrashed its tail soaking me (moderate soaking, hey, its better for the story).

I freakin' imploded/exploded and started cussin' and hurling insults at the fish, the spot, my hook and myself. I almost threw my rod at the fish... the closest I've ever come. After a minute, I just started laughing at myself for being such a jerk.

The fish was around 36" which is a darn nice fish for this spot and would have been great on my light outfit in about 2 feet of water.

But honestly, I think I felt alot better after losing the fish and throwing a fit, then I would have if I'd have caught it. It still makes me laugh... I guess you had to be there, although I'm glad none of you were.

Moral of the Story: Don't take yourself and fishing so seriously. We're out there to have fun, not to act like lunatics.:smash:

I have a memorable day where the bite was good but it wasn't a bite on my line that makes it memorable.
Summer of 2000 I took my boat out to Scorton ledge with my Dad,my son and my nephew to do a little bass fishing(and blues).
Well there was quite a crowd there that day, about 100 boats, and most everyone were trolling more or less north to south which made things easier with tangles and stuff. Well after a few bluefish and some small bass on the tubes I got a nice 38" bass so I let my dad take the next fish. As soon as the ledge showed up on the fishfinder once the tube got there a nice fish nailed it and line was coming off fast. I pulled in the other line and steered the boat while my dad turned red as he struggled with his largest bass ever, and first keeper I believe. Turned out to be 42" and twenty something pounds. The kids had fun and we did too. But the smile on my dads face is permanently etched in my memory.

Now I gotta try to see him get one bigger from shore :)

The best of 2001 was the morning I got my first over 30 pounder. I was into a plethora of bass untill my arms ached and barely got the beast to my truck. :) 5 oz white smilin bill ( ala Saltheart)did the trick with an uncle josh white rind. west tide in the canal.

Best Bite in 01
 

It was the fish that never showed up that gave me so much enjoyment just waiting for it to get wherever I was. For me its the quality of the day, which leads to that moment in time when the vibration of the fish nibbling on whatever your offering is transmitted to your hands, and you pull back on the rod hoping to set the hook. The anticipation of this happening and the time well-spent with friends participating in the same activity at the same time, enjoying each others company is was the best bite in 01 for me................... :cool:

And I caught plenty of fish in case your wondering.

It is better to have fished and lost than never to have fished at all. "me"

This doesnt qualify for biggest ......but definately memorable!!!!!! My first "double-header" thanks to my idle!!;) ;) HA!HA!

HEY S.B. ........how the heck are ya anyways?????:p April is only three months away !!!!!;)

Marlin Madness
 

One of my memorable hook ups in 2001 was fishing a practice day before a tournament in South Abaco Bahamas last April. We were trolling for blue marlin when a 500lber surfaced on the port side teaser . well i grabbed a pitch bait rigged with a sewn cero mackerel and slowly let it out and my friend carefully pulled away the teaser. Well it didn't take long for that fish to take off with the bait and comense on an aerial exibition after a while we successfully tagged and released that fish. It was great feeding that fish that bait while carefully removing the teaser. To bad it happened a day early.

Mr Kav - welcome back - good holidays I hope...

You do any Bluefin Tuna up here?

thanks john it is good to be back i was away for a while over and after the new year , this was a great post i enjoyed reading this thread what a picture of that Mako. As for Giant Blue fin's i haven't done any in some time. i used to go out off Newburyport on a small commercial 23 footer but haven't done any since then. Have managed a few nice yellowfin so far this year Those giants are to hard on the back.

I suppose the one I remember was also one that I didn't get. It was the night of the first MA Leg of the tourney here. A bunch of you guys went to Chatam Light, and I decided I wasn't up for the walk with my bad knees. I headed to Duxbury, hoping to get out to the ocean. Unfortunately, the Harbor Master's B***H woman was sitting on the other side of the bridge, and wouldn't let me park there. She said she was staying till 2 AM, so to kill some time until then, I went and parked on the bay side of the bridge and was throwing a needfish and teaser in the bay. After a while, two young kids came by and started throwing some stuff as well. I could tell they didn't much know what they were doing. They watched me bring in a couple short stripers, which, incidently, had christened a new outfit I had bought that spring. They kept casting and casting, not getting anything.

Once I saw that the guard had left the post, I decided to go over and give the ocean side a shot. As I was walking away, I stopped by one of the kids and told him to look where I had been standing. I told him that there was a underwater point that went out into the bay at that spot. I advised him that while the tide was still coming in, to cast to just north of the point, and when the tide started going out, to switch to the south side, that the fish hang on the down current side of the point, waiting for bait to flow over it. He told me :Gee thanks, mister."

A few minutes later, as I was driving over the bridge, I looked down and saw his rod bent over. He pulled in a small, 22"ish striper, but the thumbs up he gave me and the smile on his face made my night.

I proceded to get skunked over on the ocean side, but uit really didn't matter. :D

Then, of course, there was Charlie's fish, but I wasn't there, so...

Since you asked for "bites" Mike and not fish I thought I'd post a little story I posted on SOL back in the summer. The event took place on 8/30/01 at Indian River Inlet, DE, my homewater. My apologies to those who have already seen it but it's appropriate for this thread and a fair read for a dreary winter's day, if I do say so myself. :)

This morning was already going kind of rough. One of my prize Habs Needles was cast off when I didn’t realize my teaser was hung on a guide. I was down to number five in a six-pack of freshly rigged eels. And I had just spent fifteen minutes of a precious three hours fishing time untangling a fuzzball. Dawn was coming fast, I had one fish, not a bad one, about 11 pounds, but still just one fish and it seemed I had spent more time fiddling than fishing. “Man, I’m really not ‘in the zone’ tonight," had been my mantra for the entire tide.

I was flipping a “Delmarva riggie”, an eel simply cinched to a jig head, quartering it uptide and swimming it down. The casts were short and the retrieve was just fast enough to keep the eel out of the rocks. “Doodling”, I call it. It’s very effective this time of year, either with a plastic eel or especially, the real thing.

The rod I was using was one the fine Mr. Klein had lent me to test in my quest for the perfect jetty/light plug rod. The rod is unique, it is a Lami GLB1081MH fabric pattern which was wrapped on a GLB1081M mandrel. It has plenty of oomph for a stick capable of throwing light plugs, three ounces doesn’t make it groan. It correlates power wise with the Loomis 108-20, except being a Lami it has that typical, nice progressive taper so important in keeping small hooks in big fish when using braid. I had already used the rod to whup up on numerous fish from fifteen to twenty three pounds. Each time the fish was beat in short order and the rod was never close to “bottoming out”.

So, it’s getting on towards light and I’m on my fifth eel when halfway through the retrieve the eel comes to a dead stop. No bump, or rattle, not even a tic, just a dead stop. Thinking I was about to go to eel number six I popped the rod a few times to dislodge the hook from the jetty face. Still hung, I tried a steady pull. Something felt kind of spongy, very unrocklike. “Stinking fishing line,” I muttered, believing I had hung a ball of tangled line. Hoping it was mono and I could break it off, I dropped the rod tip and pulled straight on the line. That’s when things started happening.

Boy did they start happening. Straight out into the inlet runs what by now is obviously a very alive and very large rock of a different stripe. A good strong run, more than that, an awesome run. Suddenly I get that peculiar elation/dread feeling you only get when you know you have a very big fish on. Down and out, down and out the fish goes, yeehah!

Just about the time I started thinking it was time for this old gal to stop and for me to get her up she turns with the incoming tide and hits second gear. “Now wait a minute, baby,” I think/say to the fish as a I haul back on the rod and lock it up, “not so fast.” As I mentioned twenty pound fish haven’t even come close to bottoming out this rod and now I’ve got the thing bent to the butt, locked up tighter than a bung. The fish’s response? She stuck it in third and kept right on git’nit! “Better chase her,” I think.

I take off at a fast walk keeping the rod bent to the hilt. Despite giving chase, by the time I reach second break (maybe 50 yards to you non-IRI guys) the fish has peeled off another fifty or so yards of line. Shortly past second break the fish stops for the first time. Feeling her headshakes I could tell for the first time she was no ray but indeed a finfish, most likely a rock. “Okay, let's see if I can bring her up, maybe even turn her,” I think. Bring her up?! I couldn’t budge her. For the first time I put my hand on the spool. “Let’s lock this drag up for just a little and put the boots to her, see what happens,” I think, putting all the strain on the line I dared. Her response was to run it up to fourth gear and split. “Better run after her,” I think. Off at a trot I go, trying to keep the rod maxed out and the line from disappearing from my reel. The rod part went pretty well, the line part not so good.

About the time I get to first break (thirty more yards to you non-IRI guys) she gets to the hole on the east side of the bridge. “Okay,” I think, “ she’s got 90 foot of water to swim in now, I’m in pretty good shape.” Her response was to set her tabs to “dive” slide into overdrive and keep right on git’nit!

I’ve never seen a rockfish take drag so fast! And this after already stripping off close to a hundred yards of line and dragging me with a locked up, bent to the hilt, powerful fishing rod eighty yards down the jetty. My elation/dread was fast becoming dread/elation. Another honest one hundred yards disappears from the spool. I burn my thumb feathering in as much additional drag as I dare. By the time I hit the sidewalk (twenty more yards to you non-IRI guys) I am running. By now I have maybe forty or fifty yards max left on the spool.

After the sprint into the deep hole the fish begins to tire. She begins to make short, drag taking spurts followed by a lot of dogging and head shaking. I begin to lift her for the first time. I can feel her planing toward the surface. I am still unable to turn her. Each little run takes her closer to the bridge. I try desperately to stop her. Just as the battle starts going to my side she winds up on the south side of the piling, I am on the north. “Pop” and it’s over. I am exhausted. I am heartbroken.

I have a handful of thirties from the inlet, quite a number in the twenties. I’ve lost many that I believed to be bigger. None have come anywhere close to showing the power that this fish showed. It was awesome. As usual, one can only wonder. My fifty? A new state record? Who can say? It is rather immaterial, for yet she swims.

Some say, “better to love and lost than to never have loved at all.” Right now I say, “horse hocky on all that!” “I had the fish of a lifetime on, fought her extremely well and got woofed by a bridge piling!” “If that bridge had not been there I would have had her beat by the pole bend and I could have landed her in the nice quiet water of the back eddy.” The IRI is a mean old mistress. She charges hard for her affections. Right now I’d give her up in a minute for a nice long stretch of clean, soft sand. Trouble is no stretch of sand around here offers quite the kind of affections she offers. I still love her.

Plug

lil' best bite 01
 

taking the wife and kids scup fishing in the bay one day with light tackle...kids having a ball catching like mad...all of a sudden the wife is reeling in a "little-guy", the rod doubles over under the boat and the drag is begging for mercy. Here is what she landed...it was still wiggling with a few drops of fish blood dripping off:

Ohhh, Memories of last season....

Biggest fish was just under 30 lbs , eel skin jig on a west tide, but the real catch was having my friend Matt with me who had never fished (really fished) before with me catch a couple fish and see the expression on his face when I pulled the 44" fish out of the water!

Another episode that sticks out was an afternoon east tide in late Oct, about 4 pm. I had been working in Plymouth that day and was putting in all kinds of hours knowing that I was moving to Missouri in a couple weeks. It had been a ok pick for a couple days but nothing consistent or large in the am's or pm's. I had been so used to fishing skins in the night and mornings that I had forgotten about my hand tied chartuese bucktail with flashabou. I nailed two fish in the mid twenties, one 44" and one 43." Both were really bright fish and probably just passing through headed south.

My most memorable and worst feeling was the fish I lost two nights before I left for Missouri. She was a truck, no joke. I think I told the story already so I'll spare you the fishermans tale. Just to give you an idea of how much of an impact it has had on me as a wake up call; broke 50 lb specton, not leader or rock rub or poor knot. Abu Drags suck. Here is how it goes down...

1) lose lifetime fish (had on for over 5 mins, it was lifetime fish for sure) two days prior to leaving for MO.
2) Hit deer and total car on way to MO. 8500 dollars in damage not including residuals like renting U-haul towing ect.
3) tow dolly comes off back of u-haul and hit someones car. Think it might have been some punks prank because we made it to St Louis with the jeep on it and the day we were bringing it back it came off!!!

Bad things happen in threes. End of sad story,sorry for the ramble, I'm over the car but not the Fish

East Tide:af:

Do I have to say????

PLUG, I KNOW :crying: :crying: :crying: - If the fish had only gone LEFT instead of RIGHT!!!!!!

Plug, I enjoyed that story just as much the second time around. Too bad it didn't have a happier ending.

BM, ya what's your story?