A bad day of fishing is better than just about anything. A mediocre day is even better. Fishing with some good friends on the Chesapeake Bay is about as good as it possibly can get.
We left out of Solomons Island at 0' dawns early light. The sun was trying hard to poke it's head up over the horizon. It still had a good half hour or more before it was going to show itself.
The moon was full and it was trying hard to drop down below the horizon. It too had a solid half hour to wait...
The umbrella rigs had no wait to speak of.
By the time the sun cleared the horizon, we were fishing.
And so began a spectacular day...
It was a day that just got better and better. The red solo cups were kept full throughout as the sun worked her way across the sky.
Our group is made up of repeat offenders on the Brawler. On this boat you do not go fishing, you go catching. All you out of state readers, make it an excuse to visit Maryland. Any of you in state readers who have never gone, I feel bad for you.
That fish in John's hands is 41 inches long and weights 43 pounds. One filet will feed my family for four meals. Rockfish has the texture of lobster and the taste of crab. It is my favorite fish. Outside of the Chesapeake Bay this same fish is called a stripped bass. Here, we call them rock casually and rockfish formally. Everyone calls them good eating!
Who needs the Blue Angles when you are fishing right next to Patuxent Naval Air Station. All day long we watched all kind of jets zip by overhead. They practice a lot of touch and goes at Patuxent NAS. A few F-117 stealth fighters buzzed by. What a weird looking plane. I sure hope it is worth $42.6 million dollars each.
Back to catching. Dr Lou is up. Lou is one hell of a sportsman. If you ever go dove hunting with him, make sure you are far up field, because not much is getting past him...
... and very few fish get by him either. 39 inches long, 39 pounds. That fish is something to be proud of too. I wish I could show you more photos of fish brought into the boat, but we did not put any more into the box. We had a number of strikes during the day, but none of them resulted in a set hook. When you have a full moon, you have higher than normal tides know as a flood tide. With a tide that is super high, you have a very long period of time in which it is slack or the water does not move at all. During slack tide the rock do not feed at all. Unfortunately for us, the slack tide fell right into the later half of our trip.
None the less, a mediocre day of fishing is better than just about anything going. This will be far from our last trip on the Brawler. Perhaps one of you out of staters will come visit and we can go. The season does end on the 15th of December. It opens again in April. We have a trip booked already for May.
