I was armed with medium weight freshwater gear, and Val had her flyrod. We launched shortly after 5:00, and were quickly into the blues. The bite was consistent for the next few hours until the outgoing tide went slack.
I chose to put Scott in the Jackson “Big Tuna” for his first kayak trip, to help inspire some confidence. I think it worked, because about half an hour after launching Scott had his first schoolie in the kayak.
Scott ended the day with three stripers, and more blues then anyone was going to count. At times we were we were catching them on back to back-to-back casts.
Right around the slack tide, my kayak started to feel odd. In the rush to prep two kayaks and all the gear to launch, I had forgotten to put my drain plug all the way in. I went over to a sand bar and had to bail out 6” of water. We all took a break on the bar, and relaxed for a while until the tide turned and started to roll in. There we met up with Jack, who was paddling a Cuda he recently got. The fishing picked up soon after, and the bite was pretty consistent the rest of the day.
Val took a break from her kayak and waded a sandbar for a while, beating up on the blues with her fly rod. As she put it, “This is, in essence, a picture of pure happiness”
Val ended up with the biggest striper of the day right when we decided to head back to the launch.
It was a great day to be on the water in a beautiful place - I’m glad I finally got down there. We caught fish consistently for over seven hours. I had a great day as well, with a couple of dozen blues up to 20” and four stripers to 18”. One larger striper took advantage of a frayed main line. It was hard to watch the line unwind about a foot above my leader, 10’ in front of my kayak, knowing there was nothing I could do. With all the catching going on, it gave me time to take a few breaks and shoot some pictures.
Comments
It is the longest one. 16" I think.