Father's day weekend... a bit dated.

[schoolie monster]

I realize this is a couple weeks old, but I wanted to share after that great father's day thread. I know it won't compete with the "flesh eating bacteria - body cavity flushing" thread, but that's understandable.

My pops was up for the week of father's day and we had a great time. We didn't fish as much this year, but we got out two days and spent alot of quality time with the grandkids. My dad is pretty much in awe of the twins and already is making plans to visit again in the fall.

We fished thurs and sat of that weekend and I'm sure I don't need to give you all a weather report. The fishing report wasn't great either. We went out early am on thurs and right off the bat we found some decent schoolies working bait off of Hangman's Isl. The fish were all 20-24" and fun. We split a dozen fish between us and enjoyed the glassy, foggy morning.

My gameplan was to hit the early topwater schoolie bite and then go look for some mackerel as they were pretty thick at that point. I want to work on that part of my game and wanted to get my dad a shot at some big fish. It was still pretty foggy, so I went over into dorch bay and to the mouth of the neponset river where I'd got a bunch of fish the prior week. The fish were there, but instead of the decent schoolies I'd had, the fish were really small. We got a few on our lightest gear, but I didn't want to hang around... plus with no wind, it was buggy as hell.

Unfortunately, there was a dense fog bank at Hull Gut and while I have gps and all, I haven't worked much outside the harbor and I decided to give it more time to burn off. We screwed around a little more inside and I tried for herring in a few spots with no success.

I ran out to the gut again and it was worse... then, the NE wind started up and it got choppy and chilly. We bumped into some small schoolies chasing bait in the fore river and ended with a couple more fish each. It was getting nasty so we figured we go hang out with the babies.

Saturday was pretty comfortable and didn't rain much despite threatening all morning, but after two days of NE blow, there wasn't much of an early bite. I decided to pound some structure and it kinda worked, but we didn't do our part. We got the dropsies and each lost decent fish at several spots. I had a pretty nice fish straighten a hook, another break off right in the rocks of deer isl light. My dad lost a really nice fish that peeled some major drag before shaking the hook. Just guessing, but it was probably a 40"+ fish which would have been nice on artificials. It got ridiculous as we each lost 6 or 7 fish in a row.

My hooks were sharp, but I finally checked my dad's and it was like a paper clip. Now, I know he doesn't fish much anymore, but I had to haze him about it. He's been fishing for a long time to make a rookie mistake like that.

I got off the schnide by the airport when we found a brief blitz and I got a couple including a small keeper. I ran over to the river again to try and get my dad a fish, but it was dead. One swipe at a popper was it. I went back to fishing rocks and hit some structure outside the harbor. We picked up a few schoolies doing that (you'll know where when you see the pic). I was glad cause I was getting worried my dad was gonna take the skunk. We ran back into the harbor and hit a few of the spots where we'd lost fish and to try and bump into another blitz. We each took one more fish out of a rip off of thompson's isl... my fish was another small keeper.

That was it... we could've had a decent day if we had held onto a few of those fish early on, but we had fun. Getting alot of fish is only part of the deal.

Here are some pics. We didn't take very many... to be honest, I was pretty confident that we were going to get some large, so we were gonna wait for that. Best laid plans... I was even planning a fish dinner for thurs night. I caught a couple of good eaters on sat, but we were having our traditional lobster dinner so I made no kills.

This was the only sun we saw his whole trip...