[Rockfish9]

With the shortening of days ( not enough daylight to run pots after work) and the looming hurricane and non stop N/E winds, I hauled my pots Monday, Saturday I worked hard to realign them as some of them were sanded in badly from the onshore winds and others moved around( mostly by fisherman using them to anchor as they fish)..after reviewing the long range I decided to pull the pots for the season... even with a S/E wind quartering the mouth of the river it was standing white on the outgoing yesterday, but by staying hard to the jetty I was able to avoid most of the ugly stuff, I did have one ( about a 6'er) roll up and put a little water on deck on the way out just as I made my turn around the north jetty heading sea ward.. I had 8 keeper bugs on Saturday and added 8 more yesterday, it was a good season I got 268 total, with 96 of them being keepers.. this year I ran pig hide bait ( for the first time) in conjunction with fresh pogies and mackerel, I found the pig hide survived the sand fleas a lot better than the fish bait does.. I normally check every 2 days during the summer.. I also moved on from 3 and 4' pots to 30" pots ( 6 of my 10 old pots got stolen from the marina as I was staging them this past spring) I find the 30" pot a lot better for small boat fishing , I can stack all 10 in my 18' center console.. best part, they fish pretty darn good as well.. I also added that Scotty pot hauler, it is a nice addition and is even capable of hauling your pot when some one lays a trawl down over your set ( it happened a few times this year, id recommend it to anyone wanting an removable light weight hauler)..time to concentrate of the fall run for bass, as a side note, mid week all the pogies that have been out front all summer vanished.. but mackerel have returned with a vengeance.. the fall run is on.