First of all, Bob, I'm sorry I didn't get back to you Sunday. My daughter has picked up a new habit of playing our messages... at 4 1/2, she's not quite versed on passing on those messages. Apparently sometime Sunday afternoon when they got back home, she pressed the button... our machine saves the messages automatically, but I didn't get yours till last night while cleaning out the "archives"...
I was "guiding" monday, so I wouldn't have been able to go, but I felt kinda bad. Glad you had a good trip out and thanks for the invite.
Anyway, yes, yesterday was fantastic... after non-stop winds for a month+, it was great to get out and not get too beat up. The morning was so quiet and calm... it was just awesome. I took my cousin's fiance out for his first taste of saltwater fishing. We had a blast. I had him fishing mostly with a FW special... pearl cocahoe shad w/teaser and he caught 39 stripers with the bulk of the fish between 16-24". He also go quite a few of those on popper's. The teaser produced well including numerous doubles with the bigger fish more often caught on the teaser. I felt that the smaller fish were getting to the bait first, with the bigger fish following them then hitting the teaser. Todd is an avid freshwater bass angler who fishes tourny's, etc. so he's a good fisherman, but he was in awe of the incredible action. Add dozens of hits and explosions on the popper and we had virtually non-stop action throughout the day.
I had my fix of numbers from Sun, so I fished mostly larger jerkbaits and was really picking up the bigger fish regularly. Most of my fish were over 20" with many just under keeper size. Out of the 24 fish I landed, only two fish measured, both 30"... Todd lost the biggest fish of the day right at the boat... it was probably 34" and thick.
There was a big school that stayed up most of the morning, but their where a half dozen boats on it, so I stayed after the faster moving "off-shoots" to keep to ourselves a bit more.
For the weekend overall, the harbor and rivers are loaded. Saturday I didn't find any fish up top... I think the wind had the bait spread out. I found fish on Jacknife Ledge, the flat at the mouth of the Neponset River (on the incoming), up in the river, and on the outgoing tide in the Back River. I had a bunch of keeper size fish follow my bait or a hooked smaller schoolie and I landed 3 fish 29-32" and had half a dozen more that were right under the mark. Most of the fish fat and healthy with alot covered with sea lice. The big producer was my new GS smoke/clear belly jerkbait... its got quite a bit more mass than a slug-o and the bigger schoolies were diggin' it.
More wind on Sunday so instead of fighting it (and spending an hour waiting to pull the boat out), I switched to smaller jerkbaits and shads and hit my favorite shore spot and caught fish after fish, mostly small, but a few decent mixed in, including 2 keepers. Again, there were alot of those micro bass (10" and under) that I don't remember seeing before. Tons of those on the cape this spring...
Anyway, when I bought the new boat, this was the type of fishing I had envisioned... fast exciting action with light tackle and artificials. I gotta admit, I'm pretty darn happy. The damage for the weekend was well over 100 bass (plus, Todd's 39), plus Thursday's bluefish action down on the cape. I'm one content tired raw handed SOB right now.
I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday weekend as much as I did.