Fishin in the rain

[dw]

Been wicked busy at work for the past few weeks and wasn't going to let the rain stop me today. thought about doin the wally thing but dealing with the wind didn't interest me so I went after the usual gills and hopefully crapps in the Islands. Tried a bunch of different baits today and got bites on most all of em, problem was the fish were small and I missed a bunch, pearl white tube with red flake did the best. Ended up with a few decent gills/seeds and managed 5 crapps, 1 rudd and a 4.5 lb large mouth Not a slammer but better than not fishing at all.

[Champlain Islander]

Wow I didn't figure anyone would be out today. The wind was pushing whitecaps past the house and the rain was torrential. I even went out and pulled the bilge plug on the boat just to keep the stuff on the floor from floating. I had a decent day yesterday on gills but no crappie. Plan to hit it again tomorrow but have a dentist appt first then back to the Islands and load the boat up if the weather is Ok.

[dw]

Yeah it wasn't optimal conditions thats for sure. I was fishing off the bank and chose my spots to stay out of the wind. Only other person I saw out was the warden, who snuck up behind me and startled the hell out of me. She laughed pretty good at that. Very pleasant to talk to though. Hey Islander how did you do on the ocean? I sent a PM.

[Champlain Islander]

Sorry I missed the PM I have a bad habit of not checking stuff like that. You must have met up with Jen Reed. I ice fish all the time with her dad Pete. He is very proud of her and justifiably so. I haven't had the pleasure of getting checked by her but I look forward to it. I always like to see them out and about making sure our laws are being followed. I did well on the cod trip. We fished 2 marathon 12 hour days out of Seabrook and specifically on Eastman's Annie B with Capt Nate on a 6 pack charter. I have been out with him a few other times and he is #1. Just a young guy but what a great guide and really good at what he does. He takes about 20 seconds to fillet a fish...any fish big or small and does a great job. I guess you have to be fast when you are doing a hundred or more fish. He really tries to get you on the fish and a bad day for him is almost a slammer for most of the others out there. Friday was a really rough day to fish with a good chop and pretty steady rain. The wind wasn't all that bad but the tides from that super full moon were strong making getting to the bottom and staying there tough. We drifted free and used a sea anchor quite a bit of the time to slow us up. On some spots we threw anchor and had a good mix of catches from jigs and bait alike. We probably kept about 60 fish and threw back about twice that so it was decent action. Saturday was really good and we filled the 4' box in about 2 hours. It slowed after that but every spot we tried we picked fish. It was a mix of cod, haddock and polluck with a few red fish and cusk thrown in. I am sure in all we caught a couple hundred fish counting the throw backs. We split the fillets up 6 ways and we all brought back 6 gallon bags full of fillets. I packaged them and ended up with 27 meals which when you figure it all out my trip didn't cost that much if you look at the price of good fresh fish. Of the 6 of us 4 had their own rods and we certainly out caught the other 2 who used the boat rods. Having a good quality rod and reel along with braided line really helps detect even the slightest bite. I have another 1 day trip in June going with a different group and I am not sure who we are going with or what we will be targeting. I hope it is cod and haddock. He asked me to go since he needed another body and I said yes. Any day out there on the ocean is always fun just to be there.