For me, one of the great joys of fishing is having the opportunity to share the experience with one of the many people who have blessed my life.
Saturday, I was out with my kayak fishing friend George, and Sunday I had the chance to get back on the Housatonic River with another of my favorite fishing partners, my nephew Paulie. I've been patiently waiting for an opportunity to get out there with Paulie on his new bass boat, a 21' Stratos equipped with a honkin' 250 hp motor! As if I wasn't already thrilled to spend some time with Paulie on his new boat, my wife asked me if I could get my youngest daughter Olivia out of the house so she could wrap some Christmas presents. Now fishing with Paulie or George is great, but nothing makes me happier than to have one of my girls out fishin' with me. I have so many great memories of days that all seem like yesterday, packing a lunch, grabbing a dozen night crawlers at the bait shop and luggin' the two girls off to lake or pond for a couple hours of fishing for Sunfish or Largemouth Bass. I asked Liv if she wanted to come fishing with us. It took a little coaxing to get her to agree, but she said she would go if it would "get her into my blog."
Paulie met us at Sunnyside boat ramp a little after 1pm and we loaded our gear onto his boat and headed out. We started fishing right in front of the launch for a bit, and I could tell that things were going to be a little slower than they had been on Saturday. The fish seemed to be much more spread out and were not biting as aggressively as they had been 36 hrs earlier. I already had a rod set up for Liv and I immediately started her training session. It's taken me quite some time myself to truly perfect the technique. There've been many hours of watching and imitating George's every crank of the reel, every twitch of the rod, and now, I needed to quickly do a brain dump of as much of this knowledge as I could into a 15-year-old who I knew would probably not last too long if she didn't start catching fish pretty quickly.
After 20 minutes or so near the launch, Paulie suggested we head south a ways. I readily agreed as I noted at least a half dozen fishing boats about a mile and a half down the river as we drove past on the way in. Once we cleared the no wake zone adjacent to the launch, Paulie opened her up as we launched down river at about 55mph. As we closed in on the other boats, he brought us back down to no-wake speed and soon his Lowrance sonar gear lit up showing a nice size school of bass. Now all we had to do was help Liv hook one...
I watched with pride as she took the information I had provided her and to put it into action; where to cast, how long to let the lure fall in the water column, how quickly to retrieve, how to avoid slack in her line, how to twitch the lure every so often to make it dance in the water. She took it all in and went to work. However, neither Paulie nor I were getting bit at that point and I was a little concerned the fish were not going to cooperate. I moved to the bow of the boat with Paulie and gave her all the room she needed at the stern. Soon, I felt that familiar thump at the other end of my line. I gave it a good hook set and felt the fish there before stepping back towards Olivia, "Here try this rod Liv" I said, "this one may be a little easier to use." She was surprised to feel something pulling back as she took it in her hands. I few short moments later, we had our first striper, and her "first ever" aboard.
Well, of course, having Dad actually catch the first one was not quite what she wanted, so back to work she went. A few short minutes later, she had one on! I went back to help her land a nice little 15-incher and get a photo of her official first ever Striper.
Olivia with her official first-ever Striped Bass
Phew! Success! What next? Well, now that she had caught her first fish, she had to learn how to land one all by herself, right? For this fun, I grabbed the following "instructional video." ;)
We fished on for another hour or so before I could see she'd had enough. Altogether, she landed 4 nice bass all by herself and one with a little help from her Dad. As the wind started to pick up a bit, Paulie hauled us back to the boat ramp (I think we might have touched 70 mph) and dropped us off. It was a super rewarding couple hours for me and such great fun to see Olivia do so well on her first striper adventure.
The holidays couldn't have come soon enough... Two weeks off!! Yessss! And what better way to get it started than some fishing??
The alarm went off at 3am Saturday morning, and by 4am, George and I were on the water. It's a struggle getting up that early, but I sure love the tranquility of being the first ones out and having a nice slice of the Housatonic all to ourselves.
We were over a good school of fish after about 10 short paddle strokes. George started chuckin' the zoom fluke and was determined to catch one on a 7" black slug-go tipped with a 1/2 oz jighead. Things were little quiet for the first 45 minutes or so until my slug-go found the mark on a nice 20+ incher. I had a couple more hits after that, but no takers. We paddled up to "the cove" where some ice was built up. Many times we find the stripers hanging near the outer edges of ice. No action this time. We headed to "the pipes" and soon George had a couple good schoolies on consecutive casts. We each had one or two more shake off on us as we noticed the boats starting to flood onto the water back down at the boat launch.
As dawn started to slowly brighten the skies, the action started to pick up dramatically, we found a nice school of bass right in the center of the river and I suddenly had a fish on that didn't want to come to the surface too quickly. A few moments later I had a nice 26 1/2" bass in my kayak. George was about to come over a get a photo when he hooked up with a decent fish of his own. I had my camera, but I just hadn't got it ready yet. I decided to let the fish go with no photo.
The fishing from there on out, was pretty stellar and by the time I had to leave around 8:30, I had boated 21 fish. As usual, George scored at least double my count, maybe triple, including a nice 24 or 25 incher. Here's some photos from another awesome day on the Housatonic. What a way to get my vacation started with a bang!
As I was gnawing on one of the nice sandwiches Brian had packed for the trip, I decided to switch to my lighter inshore rod and try tossing a plastic swim shad lure like what I use at home in the Housatonic River.
We were about a quarter-mile up into the inlet and Brian was doing his best to position us so that we would drift back towards the mouth of the inlet in the swift outgoing current right along the rocky shoreline.
Fire Island Inlet
As I got ready for my first cast, the crank on my reel felt strange. I looked down and saw the crank shaft and handle contorted into a very abnormal position. On a boat not designed for fishing, there are no rod holders, so we were just leaning rods against whatever we could find. Obviously, my damaged reel had recently been the unfortunate victim of one of us stepping on the outstretched rod handle in the midst of landing a fish or trying to maintain balance. Ugh...I tried to bend it back into position, but, it'll never be the same again. Nonetheless, I made the best of it, and Mike and I tried in vain to find some more action in our new location.
After an hour or so, I suggested maybe we should try right in the mouth of the inlet. So we headed back and set up a few hundred yards from where the outgoing bay water meshed with the ocean causing some more of the bigger rolling waves that I wanted to now stay clear of. I went back to my 4oz diamond jig and cast it out along the edge of the rip as we drifted out in the current. Realizing we had never got Brian's rod set back up after we had cut the line during the tussle with my bluefish earlier, I offered to rig it back up for him. I decided to leave my jig in the water and let it drift along with us while I worked, and I loosened my drag and set my rod down leaning against the seats and over the gunwale in the front of the boat as I headed to the back of the boat.
As I re-ran the fishing line through the guides of Brian's rod, Mike suddenly said, "Hey, do you have your line in the water up there?" I said "Yea..." as I looked up towards the front of the boat. My rod had now jumped up onto the seat and was looking to make a suicide leap over the side. Brian sprinted to the bow and grabbed the butt of the rod just as it was heading over. I came right behind him and he handed it over to me. Whatdayaknow! A couple minutes later another 10-pound blue was in the boat!
With some renewed optimism, we moved the boat back into the mouth of the inlet to set up another drift and started chuckin' our jigs with some more fervor. Well, we drifted around the area for another 45 minutes or so with no additional bites. Brian was fishing and relaxing at the rear of the boat and I asked if it would be ok to maneuver the boat around for him for a while. His boat has some nice nautical GPS on it and I was carefully monitoring it to make sure we stayed in deep enough water so that we didn't get stuck up on one of the many sandbars that were now showing themselves in the low tide.
As I was studying the GPS, I noticed a couple of underwater "humps" on the map just to the immediate southeast of the inlet. Knowing that humps, or anyplace where there are sharp changes in depth, are many times good places to find fish, I slowly drove the boat over and positioned us right over the spot. Then I had Mike cast over the side where the target location was as I held the boat in position. We were holding there for a minute or two when Brian came up from his spot at the rear, leaned his rod up against a seat and announced that he was done fishing for the day. He said I could head up alongside Mike and get some more casts in, and he dropped himself in the captain's seat. I eagerly grabbed my rod and Mike and I pitched our diamond jigs over to where we thought the humps were. The sun was getting low in the western sky and I figured we were enjoying our last few moments of what had already been a fairly eventful day.
Not eventful enough....
The enjoyment of those final minutes was abruptly interrupted by a heavy thud on the opposite side of the boat. Mike and I turned to see a huge channel marker up against the starboard side of the boat! We had drifted right into it as we all had our attention directed to the port side! Brian sprang to his feet as he blurted out some "Oh $^*#!!" expletives. From the rear of the cabin he reached out over the gunwale and used his arms to push the boat away from the marker as we drifted by. I noted big knots of barnacles on the outside of our foe as we past and winced to myself, "Oh man, that can't be good..."
We passed the marker and Brian popped upright. More expletives..."The side is all stratched up," he said. Then he leaned back over the gunwale again reaching down as far as he could to feel the damage. Once again I heard something unfit for print and he straightened upright again, "My phone just fell in!!" (another expletive). Brian had been popping his new iphone in and out of the breast pocket on his quilted flannel shirt all day as he kept plugged in to whatever was going on in the office. As he leaned over the side of the boat, his sleek new iphone had slid easily out to watery grave. And with it, went the many pictures he had been taking during the course of the day.
"That's it! I'm done!" he announced. "You guys done?" I said, "Yup, I guess we are now..."
It was generally a long and quiet ride back to the marina. I felt terrible that Brian had been nice enough to take us out and we were ending the day on such a bad note. Mike and I helped him wash down the boat and we closed her up. She has some pretty nasty bruises, but hopefully the marina can get her fixed up in time for next summer.
Fortunately, Brian had been texting some of our early day photos to his wife before his phone met its demise, and he forwarded them to Mike and I from her phone. One of them was my 14-pounder.
Anyway, I guess we didn't completely scare Brian away. He says he looks forward to doing it again "next year."
The big Stripers kept up their elusiveness, but we did catch some huge Blues. I don't know... was it really an Amityville Horror? You decide...
When last we left our heroes, they were steaming east along the south shore of Long Island on their way to a striped bass hot bed. Well... actually the "steaming" had been reduced to more of slow roll on some pretty rough seas. As long as we were moving, my stomach was ok, but the moment we stopped and the boat began to pitch and heave on the rolling swells, my stomach started a slow boil of its own.
About two miles into the trip, we noted a party boat with dozens of fishermen lining its outer edges, rods out, lines dropped. Knowing that the captain of any party boat will spot fish on his sonar and then tell his clients to "drop their lines," I said to Brian that they must be over some fish. So we headed upwind of them and started a drift on similar line to what they had just drifted over. It was hard just keeping ourselves upright as the boat pitched side-to-side against a constant barrage of waves. While Mike and I each dropped and retrieved our big 4-ounce diamond jigs about 15 times each, the party boaters got the "Lines in!" call from the captain as its motors came to life and it wheeled around back into the wind and off to points further east. After another 5 minutes or so, we decided we would follow suit. Where were all these other boats we were expecting to see out here anyway??
It wasn't long before Brian was getting a little impatient with the slow progress we were making and he pushed our speed back into the low teens. Soon we started spotting multiple party boats and other smaller craft on the horizon to the east. It was an encouraging site. Hopefully all these boats were over big fish! We finally reached them and found a piece of unoccupied real estate just north of another party boat and south of several smaller boats in about 45 feet of water. The three of us started tossing our jigs and slow cranking them back to the boat just as they told us to do back at the bait shop. I had set up shop in the bow of the boat, and Mike and Brian were at the stern. We drifted and fished for about a half-hour with no success. I noticed a couple fish coming in on other boats around us but I couldn't exactly see whether or not they were Stripers. There wasn't anything big that I noticed, but, it was good to know that there was at least something down there willing to chase someone's lure. I was optimistic that it would only be a matter of time before it was one of ours. The only concern I had was, what would come first? Catching fish? Or hanging my head over the side of the boat?
We soon realized that all the other boats that had been around us, had moved about a half mile to the southeast. I suggested that maybe we should head over there with them. Since we didn't have any electronics to help us find the fish, we had to use the other boats as our eyes. We made our way over to the group and once again dropped our lines. I was grateful for the short trip as it gave me a chance to gain back some control over my increasingly queasy stomach. The wind had decreased a bit and the waves were not quite as rough as they had been, but each time we stopped again, that sick feeling came back with a vengeance.
After just a few minutes on this new spot, I looked to the back of the boat and saw Brian's rod start to bend and shake. He seemed surprised, "Hey, I think I've got a fish on here!" And sure enough, he did! It was a nice 5 or 6 lb. bluefish. We were finally in business! Mike helped him land it, while I stumbled my way towards the back and grabbed my camera to capture his success. It wasn't quite what we were after, but it was good to have a fish in the boat!
Brian with the first fish of the day.
Hoping for more, I quickly put the camera away and headed back to my rod at the bow of the boat. On my second retrieve, I felt a heavy thud on the end of my line and the tip of my rod arched towards the water. "Fish On!" I yelled back to the guys. Just then, the drag on my reel started screaming as the fish made a hard run. As Mike made his way forward, I said "Not sure what it is yet, but it feels pretty big and it's staying down on me." Then the fish made another good run and I noticed that my 6' Ugly Stik rod was arched into a shape I had never seen it in before. I thought, "Could this be the big Striper I've been looking for?" Brian was now alongside with the landing net in hand as I finally started to gain back some line on this still unknown creature. I noticed my line heading down under and towards the rear of the boat and I applied some extra pressure to try and keep the fish away from the motors. Suddenly there was a flash of white followed by two splashes right off the stern. At least one of those splashes was the fish. It was a huge jumbo bluefish! It made one final run alongside the boat right in front of me. I was bringing in some more line when out of the depths up came a fishing rod and reel! "What the heck!?!" I said. Then Brian said, "Hey, I think that's my fishing pole!" Sure enough it was, and we quickly realized what that second splash was just moments before. Brian hadn't reeled in his own line and lure before coming to help me and now my fish was tangled in his line and had dragged his rod overboard! There was a few moments of scrambling as Brian and Mike tried to get the two lines untangled and I was envisioning this big fish turning into the 'one that got away.' I couldn't take it any longer... "Cut the line!" I shouted. Mike grabbed his braid cutter and quickly cut Brian's line away from mine and soon we had a monster blue in the net and onto the boat. It weighed in at a hefty 14 pounds! Not the big Striper I was hoping for, but nonetheless, the biggest blue I've ever caught! After Brian took a photo on his iPhone, I released him over the side back into the sea. That was pretty cool.
We were on the fish now. I handed Brian my other rod so that we didn't have to take the time to get his re-rigged. Not to be outdone, Mike quickly hooked into another good blue on his next cast from the stern. I hadn't even thrown my jig back out yet so I headed back to get some of the action on video.
Ok. Now after looking through a camera for a minute on a shaking, rocking boat, I headed back to my spot at the front of the boat and dropped myself into a seat. I was getting perilously close to seeing that morning's bacon, egg and cheese sandwich again.... I just wanted to hold it together now that we were onto some good fish. I took a few deep breaths, got up and cast my jig out again. Soon, Mike had another big blue on. Again, I went back to help out and take some photos. These were some healthy blues we were into!
Mike with an 11-pounder
After this one, I went back to my seat at the front of the boat. My mouth was getting dry and I started to sweat. The party would soon be over for me if we didn't get the boat moving again. I hated to do it, but I yelled back to Brian, "We need to move or I'm gonna freakin' lose it here!" He didn't waste much time firing up the motors and putting us in motion. I really didn't want to leave so soon but Brian turned the boat to the West and started back towards the inlet while I emptied out a 5-gallon bucket we'd brought along and held it in my lap in case I couldn't get it under control. I have to admit, it was pretty pitiful...and the worst part is that I knew I'd never hear the end of it from Mike. So far, I'm 100% right on that...
Well, thankfully, I did get it under control on the way back to Fire Island inlet, and as we cruised back into the comparably tranquil bay, I was even ready for some lunch!
But the day wasn't quite over yet...and in the final chapter of this tale it'll be Knuckleheads On Parade as horror abounds in Amityville.
For the 1st day of December, it was certainly a perfect day for fishing today. Some early chill and cloudiness didn't stop George and I from getting out on the Housatonic River by about 8:30am. The forecast was for warming temperatures so we knew the morning might be a little bit uncomfortable, but the fishing warmed up way before the weather as we were both on fish within the first couple casts. The first hour was absolutely smokin' as we began stringing together long runs of catching fish on consecutive casts. I'm pretty sure George said he was on a run of about 15 straight at one point before he finally missed one. I had a couple runs of maybe 3 or 4 straight, but was also playing around with my camera which was distracting me at bit from the fishing. About 45 minutes or so in, I caught what turned out to be my biggest fish of the day a nice fat
25-incher that fought real hard against my ultra-light gear. We fished about a 2-mile stretch of the river for the day and my fish finder showed many big schools of fish with some larger fish mixed in. With the dam running from Derby, there was a perfect current and we were able to drift for long stretches and just concentrate on fishing with nowhere near as much paddling as we had to do two weeks back down at the mouth of the river.
25" Schoolie Striper
For the day I ended up with 42 fish, with at least another dozen that managed to get off before I could get them to the yak. As usual, George easily caught double the amount of fish I did. He had to leave for a party about 2 hours before I did, but he was somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 fish by the time he left. These fish are very aggressive right now and we had a a blast taking advantage of it.
We also made a new friend "Russ" along the way today who was having some trouble mastering the zoom fluke jigging technique, but I offered him a couple tips and he was off and running. By the end of the day he had landed about 15 as well. Great fishing with ya Russ!
When he told me his name was Russ, it made me think about my old fishin' buddy and brother-in-law Russ "Uncle Rascal" Renzulli. Wish you were here old friend. You are still in my heart and especially when I'm on the water.
