Iteresting experience this afternoon while fishing an outflow near a local river. I was standing on a bridge drifting chunks of herring into a fast-moving current. On my first drift as my chunk fell away from edge of the rip, bang I was on! After an initial brief run it became obvious I had hooked into a schoolie. Now we have all seen it before, you hook a fish and as you are bringing it in it has company, or an escort if you will. Most times it will be a similar sized fish or two that swims alongside your hooked fish. Well, the fish that I had hooked had an escort but it was not even close to similar in size! No, my 22 inch schoolie had one MAMMOTH cow of a striper swimming with it...... or was it STOCKING IT?! I stood and looked on in amazement, at first due the COW I was looking at and then.... only about 20 ft away from me, in less than 12ft of water, the big striper in one powerful motion turned and tried to EAT my schoolie! UNnFFFFFin'; believable!
She missed. She slowly slam away. I fished for another hour and every time I had a hit I imagined that huge fish was on.... but all I caught were a whole lot of (slowly retrieved
) schoolies.
I know some of you guy have caught large with schoolies in their bellies but to have a birdseye view of one trying to eat a hooked one was really cool!