Just a short fishing story . . .

[BassyiusMaximus]

. . . I finally got to go out solo on my new boat yesterday. An absolutely fine day, partly sunny, which is good as I'm not a fan of perfectly clear days and almost no wind, just a bit of a north east breeze. I listened to a few calls from sailboaters whose engines died who needed tows as there was no wind. I got to fish many new areas as I didn't have to focus on putting my family or friends on fish so I got to try a whole lot of new places and got to fiddle with my new GPS/FF and what a treat to be able to see what the bottom looks like in many of the spots/areas that I have fished for years with no FF and to be able to see the clouds or groups of sandeels and squid that were underneath as well as well as fish.

I anchored up in one area in a dropping tide situation where the sun was still high as it was from noon-2:30 and could see tailing fish not 20-30 yards from my bow. I anchored over a hump 2-4ft and the surrounding water was 10-16 feet. Using a swimmer, I hooked a good bluefish on the 2nd or 3rd cast. Big rod bend and at least 5 good tarpon-like jumps. When I got the fish in to get the hook out it taped at 35" so it was one big bluefish but as I got it close to the boat I noticed a shape that was following the blue and it was the biggest bass I have ever seen in my life. It was huge! As the bluefish was 35", this bass went well over 50", as as soon as I had seen it checking out the bluefish I thought that if I fed the line out on the blue that I could easily have livelined it for the bass, it was that big and the scariest thing for me is that there were 2 or 3 more following the biggest bass. Am I going to be going back to this spot?, of course, I tried for the next hour or so to stick one of those fish but all I had were lures and must have been too smart to fall for my cheap-o selection for sure.

I spent some time on that point casting and catching, not really trying all that hard as waves of different sized bluefish and bass would show up making it quite interesting for the 2 hours I spent anchored up. I then moved a bit to drift along the endless stretch of boulder fields and got my slug-go on as I had never really played with the things before but while I got some good pulls and got bitten off quite a few times, I never hooked a fish. I would always get hits whenever I was able to place the slug-go or the lure right next to a big boulder though and it was a great time at dead low tide/New Moon is it? to chart out where all the rocks were and where the "route" was that I could lay out for future night missions as the water is as fishy as fishy could be.

This has been an incredible season so far, best I can remember and it has only just begun, the next month for me is the best of the season, the big bass get caught at night and the bonito will show soon enough and with a new boat, things only get better.