Fishing Friday

I think when I grow up, I want to be a fishing guide. Whenever I take someone fishing I get as big a kick watching them catch fish as I do catching fish myself. The latest victim, er friend I took fishing was my friend Matt. Matt was my platoon leader when I was stationed in Colorado. In fact he is the one who took the picture of the big rainbow trout featured earlier. Well, we loaded up the boat and headed out to the bay. This was my first trip in my boat out into the main part of the Chesapeake Bay. I had taken the boat into some of the larger rivers, but never out in the really big sections. It is a fifteen foot wooden skiff with a fifteen horsepower Honda outboard. Its not exactly a yacht. Well, Matt, me and my dog Gus headed out to see what we could find. I wanted to head up toward the Kent Narrows to fish a breakwater wall, so we started in that direction. We stopped when we saw some breaking fish. Rockfish (striped bass) will chase baitfish in the fall and when this happens you can see the water boil as the baitfish clears the water with the rockfish close behind. We cast some jerkbaits into the boiling water and I was rewarded with a small (15") fish. The melee was over too quickly and so we once more began our way north. When we reached the breakwater, Matt began to cast his lure up against the wall and retrieve slowly. He caught and released two smaller fish. He then hooked up with a nice keeper. A rockfish has to be at least 18" to keep. This fish (pictured) was around 19". He caught another keeper and a couple of throwbacks. I hooked another one, but wasn't able to land it. We had wanted to fly-fish, but I was unable to locate the flybox with my striper flies. Oh well, it was a good day anyway. The ramp was about 9.5 miles from where we were fishing and the tide was coming in so it took us about an hour to get back to the truck. Matt, Gus and I had a great time.