First Time at Rudee Inlet

It's been a busy month, and it's going to continue to be busy for me for a couple more months coming up.  It has also been killing me to see pictures of other anglers getting big migrating stripers earlier this month, and I wanted to get out and catch some big fish too.  So with the one weekend I have free this month, I originally made plans to go to Cape Henlopen State Park to try to see if the big bluefish would be back from last year.  However, thunderstorms and strong winds forecasted for the weekend put a damper on those plans.  Luckily, I had a plan B to check out Rudee Inlet in Virginia Beach.  After some back and forth of emails between some of my fishing buddies, Dao agreed to join me at Rudee Inlet on Saturday.

Although I have been wanting to try fishing Rudee Inlet for several years now, this was my first time going there.  I didn't have any idea of how large a body of water it was, or how to fish it, or anything.  I just had other fishing reports to rely on, most helpful of which was Comeonfish's youtube videos.  He had been to Rudee Inlet several times this month, and did pretty well in catching speckled trout, bluefish, and even a puppy red drum.  I've read reports of flounder being in the area too, so I also was looking forward to catching some flounder as well.  It's neat that you have so many options in one body of water.  With those options, I had the following lures packed and ready: soft plastics for red drum, mirrolures for speckled trout, x-raps and bucktails for bluefish, and gulp mullets for flounder.

Shellfish at low tide.

Launching out of the boat ramp, I was surprised at the scenery that I was presented with.  The place seemed kind of marshy with tall trees past the shoreline.  It reminded me a little of Mattawoman creek or something.  Anyway, I hoped to start out by catching some speckled trout or bluefish, so I put out some x-raps and immediately began to troll parallel to the shoreline to see what I could hook up with.  I noticed that the water by the shore would slowly slope down from 1 to 4 feet, and then drop quickly to around 8 feet and continue falling deeper to 30 feet or so.  I tried to follow the little ledge as I trolled along.  Not after too long I hooked up with a small bluefish that spit the hook before I could get him to the boat, but it was still good to see that there were fish in there!  Unfortunately, that was actually the only action I got for most of the morning.

I wanted to explore the rest of the inlet before committing to fishing any area, so I followed the shoreline all the way around lake Rudee, into lake Wesley, and then through the mouth of the inlet to check out the ocean.  I didn't hook into a single fish that whole area, and didn't see other boaters, kayakers or shore anglers catch anything either.  One cool thing that happened in the morning was kayaking next to a school of dolphins.  I was just pedaling through Lake Wesley, and all was quiet when I heard a big crash in the water behind me.  I thought something was thrown into the water, but I later realized it was the sound of the dolphin coming up and blowing air out of its blowhole.

The scenery at lake Rudee.

I jigged some gulp mullets by the inlet for a little while with no luck, after which I decided to head back toward the boat ramp to continue looking for the speckled trout, red drum or bluefish.  From watching Joe's videos, I could tell that he was catching fish by the marshy areas, and not in the busier, populated areas of the rest of the lake.  After returning to the launch area, I really felt like the shoreline would be the most likely place for the trout or red drum to be, so I proceeded to spend the next hour or so casting mirrolures and jigs to the shoreline.  I caught a couple dink striped bass, but that was all I had to show for my efforts.  All the while, Dao and Paul (another kayaker who joined us for the day) were trolling large soft plastics in the middle of the lake and catching bluefish pretty consistently.  I feel like these guys have got the kayak trolling technique down pretty good.  Wherever they are, they can always catch fish trolling.

30" bluefish.

I eventually gave up on trying to catch anything by jigging, and joined my trolling buddies.  I started out using a light jighead, and a shallow diving x-rap to troll through the middle of the lake.  Dao gave me a pointer that the fish were deeper, and that he was using some heavier jig heads than he typically would use.  So I switched things up to a yozuri crystal minnow that dove a little deeper, and also to a 3/8oz jighead for my 6" soft plastic paddle tail.  That switch seemed to make all the difference.  I finally started boating bluefish, including a nice big 30" bluefish that really gave a workout on the drag of my Penn Battle 3000.  The fight he gave was a lot like the fish we caught at Cape Henlopen last year.  I've gotten my big bluefish fix for the year.  Haha.

Beautiful day!  Dao's headed to stretch his legs on the beach.

After getting a few bluefish on our stringers, Dao and I decided to go back to the inlet to jig for flounder, so we pedaled back over to the inlet and jigged our gulp mullets by the bridge pilings and the channel through the inlet.  Unfortunately, flounder fishing was very slow for everyone as far as we could tell.  We gave it a go for about an hour before giving up and going back to the lake.  We proceeded to troll for bluefish a little while longer, as the wind picked up.  Dao hooked into his own chopper bluefish, which he unfortunately lost to a bad knot.  Let that be a lesson to all!  Don't skimp on the knot, even if you're tying it on the water.

I didn't expect to bring home a fish that large...

By about 2:30, we headed in to pack it up and head home.  There was only a little bit of traffic on the HRBT, but traffic was light after that.  I got home by 7:00, unloaded my gear, and filleted the 4 fish that I brought home.  The kids had a kick out of playing with the big bluefish's tail before I cleaned it.  I grilled the big one the next evening with some salt, pepper, mayonnaise and old bay seasoning.  It was pretty good!  Actually, I think anything cooked on a charcoal grill tastes good...

She's almost as big as the fish

Reflecting back on the day, I have a couple thoughts.  THANK GOODNESS FOR A HOBIE!  I don't know if I would have had enough energy to last the entire day with my paddle kayak on my first salt-water trip of the year.  I especially don't think I would have ventured through the inlet and back to the lake twice.  Also, Monster drinks work pretty well to keep me awake, but the crash at the end is brutal.  I don't know how some of these older guys are able to do 1-day trips down to Virginia Beach.  Even though I didn't catch any speckled trout or flounder, I had fun catching bluefish with some friends.  I think I would go back to Rudee again if I were given the chance.

Big Blues in Lewes

It was perfect.  My wife was to fly to St. Louis with the kids for a week, and I had no obligations for the weekend.  There have been reports of big bluefish out of Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware.  I had to go and get some big bluefish!  I haven't touched any saltwater since last fall...I'm itching to go out!

Several of my fishing buddies had plans to go to CHSP on Friday, so I took the day off from work and joined them.  Mustafa and I are really feeling our aging bodies, and we made plans to share a motel in Lewes, Delaware so that we wouldn't be so tired the next day.  That turned out to be a really good idea, because I was exhausted by the end of the day.  It was also a decent price...we split it and it was only 25 bucks to spend the night.  I should do that more often....

A clearnose ray.

So Mustafa and I rolled into the parking lot around 6AM and found the others already parked and rigging their kayaks - Ryan, Mike, Jeremy and Dao.  We quickly rigged up our kayaks and rolled them to the beach.  Note to self: get beach wheels.  It is tough getting the kayak through sand with thin wheels!  As we waited for Mustafa to make it down, we waded around in the water and had fun with a clearnose ray that Jeremy spotted.  We didn't dare try to touch it, but it didn't pay us any mind as it cruised along right in front of us in the shallow water.

The inner wall.

Mustafa finally came out, and we headed out in the dense fog.  It was so thick that it was difficult to make out the fishing pier that we paddled parallel to.  Thank goodness for GPS-integrated fish finders!  I really would have had no idea where I was going without it. The tide was low slack, and while we waited for the current to pick up, several of us went to the inner wall to soak some shrimp for togs.  It was pretty slow, and I only picked up a few short togs with a couple cunners mixed in.  Some of the others were lucky enough to catch the limit of 3 togs, though.  And there were also some unlucky ones who caught huge toadfish. Blech.

One of my short togs.

Togging at the inner wall was very different from what I am used to fishing at Kiptopeke.  You are not right up against the wall and dropping rigs 20-30 feet down...you're at least 5-10 feet away, and looking for the spaces between large boulders that drop from 5 feet down to 7-8 feet.  It was a much more difficult experience for me, as I constantly had to one-hand paddle to keep my position.   At Kiptopeke I have the ships to hold on to.

One of my many bluefish.

Finally, around 10AM, Dao radioed in and said that he was starting to catch some bluefish.  He was having trouble pulling them into the boat though, because they were chomping through his 60lb mono leaders! (I had 20lb steel leaders on my rods, and managed not to lose a single rig the entire day.)  Jeremy caught his single tog, and wasn't impressed, so he and I headed back closer to the beach to find some big bluefish!  By this time the fog was still thick and we had no idea where Dao was.  Still, Jeremy and I trolled some crankbaits and bucktails as we searched around for Dao.  At one point, as Jeremy was pedaling parallel to the shoreline in about 4 feet of water, his rod went down and his drag started singing!  He fought a hard fight, and wound up losing his fish as it escaped with a big splash on the surface.  Thinking there must be more, I trolled my two rods right by where the fish hit his lure and suddenly both of my rods went down and I had two fish on!  I fought the first one for about 5 minutes before boating him, and luckily the other fish was still on the other line which also took about the same amount of time to pull in.  The fight that these fish gave was amazing on my light tackle rods!  The singing of the drag was music to my ears, and the aerial shows that the blues gave were heart pumping!  This was what I had been dreaming about the past 2 nights...

The waders helped protect me from their chompers...

We started radioing the other kayakers over to join the fun, and I texted Mike and Ryan to come as well.  I let them know that I just had a double, and Mike replied with "a double what?  where are you?"  I ended up calling them and told them we found the bluefish, and they are as long as my legs. "Get over here quick!"  We continued to just troll around for more bluefish, and we hooked up with them here and there.  Every time, we had huge smiles on our faces because these fish were so strong and fun to fight on light tackle.  I first tried to bring up the fish with my net, but these guys were too big to really fit well in the net...it was just a hassle.  I ended up using a technique that someone on the Snaggedline forum shared - bring the fish boatside, grab it by the tail, and swing it into the boat.  This worked surprisingly well, and it also kept the fish's sharp teeth away from the goods (you know what I mean).

One of Ryan's large bluefish.

By noon, most of the kayakers had left the inner wall and were all hooking into these monster bluefish.  A whole fleet of bigger boats showed up as well, and it was a lot of fun watching everyone with bowed rods pulling up big bluefish left and right.  Whenever anyone (kayakers and boaters) would see someone hook up with a fish, they would go up behind them and try to catch one of its friends.  This actually worked pretty consistently!  I had no hard feelings about it...and I don't think anyone else minded.  We were all catching fish!

My "one last fish"

By 1:00PM I was exhausted from paddling and fighting fish, so Mike and I headed in.  I am so out of kayak-fishing shape!  Just for kicks, I let out my bucktail to troll it to see if I could catch one more.  As Mike and I reached the end of the pier and were on the stretch toward the beach, I saw several groups of fish on the fishfinder.  At one point I saw them on the fishfinder, and I looked over to Mike, and said "I see a bunch of fish on my fishfinder.  If one of them were to hit my lure, he would hit it right about....now."  And on "now" Mike and I both watched my rod slam down!  We had a good laugh about that, and this 30" fish gave me the biggest fight of the day.  It was actually dragging me further and further from the beach, and it was not showing any signs of tiring.  I fought it for a good 5 minutes, and could feel myself getting more and more tired...so I finally thought "I need to bring this thing in and get to shore".  So I forced the fish next to the boat, grabbed the tail, swung the dang thing into the boat, and without unhooking it just started paddling to shore.  There was a group of boaters nearby who watched the whole thing in amazement.  It must have been comical to watch me get pulled around by the fish, then sling the fish into the boat, and immediately start paddling away.

That fog!

We made it to shore, and took a quick break to catch our breath.  Then it was time to drag our heavy kayaks back to our cars.  It was tough dragging the kayaks to the beach in the morning, and it was 10 times harder dragging them to the car after a full day of fishing!  Second note to self: get beach wheels.  I helped Mike get his Hobie Outback to the car first, and then he helped me with my kayak.  We loaded up our cars and made our way home starting around 2:30PM, to try to avoid the heaviest of Friday evening traffic.  I made it home around 6:00PM, and spent the next 2 hours filleting the fish I brought home.  For some reason it's just a lot harder to fillet larger fish.

My parents and I had some fresh sashimi (it was surprisingly good, and non-fishy) with one of the fillets that I cut, and I dropped off one set of fillets to a neighbor that we've befriended.  My mom half-seriously commented on how terrible I am at filleting these fish..."Look at all that meat on those bones," she said.  We decided to keep the bones, and grilled them the next day (it was really good).  There was enough meat that I missed from filleting that we actually had leftovers after we were done eating them.  Then the next morning, we mixed in some of the roe with some eggs for omelettes (it was OK).  What a bluefish weekend!  I don't know if I'll ever have another day of fishing like this in my life...it was truly a memorable experience with great friends.

CBKA Tournament 2014

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This past weekend I participated in the Chesapeake Bay Kayak Anglers tournament for the 3rd year in a row.  Every year the tournament gets better and better - the captain's meeting the night before with all the evening festivities, the number of participants, the amount of money raised for CCA and Make-A-Wish...  I don't go so much for the competitiveness of the tournament.  I go because it is truly the ultimate kayak fishing meet & greet in the area.  I think the majority of the attendees can probably say the same thing. 

 

 

It was also a pleasure meeting Bryan Rusk this year.  His now 25 year-old son benefited from Make-A-Wish when he was 3 years old, and it was Bryan's idea to organize a tournament to donate to the Make-A-Wish foundation.  I hope he was encouraged by the turnout, and seeing the good that comes out of the tournament first-hand.
 

 Friday Morning Prefishing

This year, my weekend started on Friday morning as I went to Goodhands Creek to fish with several other members from the SnaggedLine forum.  I met up with Jeremy and Dao at Angler's sports shop in Annapolis, and we followed each other over the Bay Bridge to the ramp.  Ryan later joined us at the creek.  We originally wanted to pre-fish the Bay Bridge by launching out of Sandy Point State Park, but the wind forecast did not look promising.  I did not want to tire myself out from all the paddling the day before the tournament, so we agreed to fish out of Goodhands just for fun.  Mustafa was also going to try to do a masgouf demo before the captain's meeting that evening, so the goal was to catch some fish large enough to cook up for the potluck dinner.

 

The Goodhands Creek launch area was clean, secluded, and a peaceful place to launch from.  Jeremy, Dao and I took our time rigging up our boats while talking about our fishing experiences from the year, and finally paddled out to sunny skies and light winds in the creek.  Immediately, I saw some grassy shoreline that I thought would likely hold some perch, so I fished with a whilte/yellow feather jig with a spinner arm along the shoreline.  Not long after I started fishing, I caught the first fish of the day, a spunky little 9 inch perch.  I continued to float down along the shoreline and proceeded to catch several more within just the first 30 minutes of the day.  They were pretty fun to catch on my ultra-light St. Croix rod with my small Pfleuger spinning reel. 

 

 

First striper of the weekend!

 

While a handful of small perch might be tasty for a fish fry, they were not going to cut it for a masgouf demo!  I decided to head up toward the Kent Narrows to see if I could catch some stripers.  I threw out my trusty X-Rap to troll it as I paddled over.  While heading out of the creek, I remembered some tips that others on the SnaggedLine forum have shared, about trolling past some of the grassy points that stick out into the water.  Right outside of the creek, I saw 2 such grassy points that I thought might hold some fish.  So I trolled my X-Rap about 5 to 10 feet out away from the points, and on my second pass I caught a 14" striper.  Cool!  The pattern worked!  18" is the legal minimum size for stripers, so I quickly let him go and proceeded to go toward the Kent Narrows bridge.  The wind was actually a bit stronger out in this open area, and I was getting wet from all the splashing, so I turned around and headed back to the perchy shoreline by the boat ramp, where I continued my ultralight fun with the perch.

 

We will masgouf you!

 

A couple hours later, I noticed that the winds died down a bit, so I decided to head back over toward Kent Narrows again.  I put out my X-Rap once again and paddled up toward the bridge.  Near the area where I had caught the striper before, my rod got knocked down and I had a fish on!  This fish felt much stronger than the striper from earlier, and he gave several nice drag-pulling runs.  When I finally pulled him out of the water, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a bluefish!  It has been a long time since I've caught a bluefish, so this was actually a treat for me.  Mustafa was also hoping someone would provide a bluefish for the masgouf demo, so on the stringer he went!  Mustafa was so happy when he found out that we had a bluefish for dinner.  Haha. 

 

I continued on and made it to the Kent Narrows bridge, but there wasn't much action going on there.  The current was still as strong as I remembered it being from fishing there 2 years ago.  Not wanting to fight the current much, and since it was getting to be near lunch time, I headed back to the launch with the others.  I caught another smaller bluefish on the way back to the launch, which I also kept for the dinner, and made it back to the launch ramp.  The others arrived soon after, and we took our time loading up our kayaks before heading to Camp Wright for registration.

 

Captain's Meeting and Evening Festivities

This was my second year camping at the tournament location, and just like last year it was a blast.  We had a quick captain's meeting, and then our annual potluck.  The highlights of the potluck were probably the steamed crabs, the raw oysters on a half-shell, and the most delicious thing I've ever tasted - bacon wrapped jalapenos filled with cream cheese...smoked right there at the camp.  After tasting that, I have decided I'm going to have to learn to smoke meats.  I really wish I had taken some pictures of those things...

 

During and after the potluck, we all just kind of spread out around the camp - hanging out with other people and talking about fishing trips, tips and techniques.  I climbed into my tent kind of early this year...around 10PM.  I was exhausted from the morning fishing trip, and had to rest up for the next day.

 

Tournament Day

Rigged up and ready to go!

 

Tournament day started at 5:40AM.  My alarm was set at 5:45, but I woke up to the sound of other excited anglers bustling around, getting their kayaks ready for launch.  I went in the camp headquarters to get some coffee and breakfast to try to wake up and load up on some carbs for the paddle ahead.  I quickly downed 2 cups of coffee, scarfed down 2 pastries, and rolled my kayak down to the beach launch area at the far end of the campsite.  Mustafa and Dao joined me, and we launched together a little after 6:30AM.

 

The Skunk Remover.

 

As soon as I paddled out on the water, I noticed that there was some rocky shoreline next to the beach launch.  I wondered if it might hold some perch, so I cast my feather jig in front of the rocks and soon caught the first fish of the day - a 10.5" white perch!  It probably won't win me any prizes, but I caught my first fish in the first 15 minutes!  

 

I stayed close to the launch area for another half hour or so, loading up on some perch to try to live-line at the bay bridge.  I caught 4, and left them in a small pool of water by my feet inside the kayak.  I figured they'd stay alive during the paddle to the bridge, which they did, but they were not lively at all.  I later just freed all of them because they weren't spunky enough to excite any predator fish.  I need to look into making a livewell....

 

Trolling X-Raps always works.

 

My plan for the day was to troll two X-Raps on my way to the bridge, and then to live-line for a bit until I ran out of live bait (which I mentioned didn't work out too well).  After that, I was going to jig the pilings and try one of the rockpiles of the bridge.  One other option I considered was trolling by the sewer pipe just north of the bay bridge, but I really did not want to spend my day paddling aimlessly around the Chesapeake Bay.  It also feels more like fishing when you catch a fish jigging than when you catch it trolling (don't tell Alan I said that).

 

The bay bridge rockpile on the east side.

 

So I made my way to the bridge, catching 1 or 2 small stripers along the way.  And after finding my perch to be nearly dead, I decided to find the rockpiles to see if I can jig up some stripers.  I couldn't really see the rockpile from the east side of the bridge where I started...but I knew that they were somewhere in the middle of the bridge, so I started paddling over.  That bridge seems a lot longer when you're paddling under it than when you're driving over it!  I finally made it to the rockpile with Dao, and we started fishing.  Dao was bottom fishing with bloodworms and hooking up with perch and nasty toadfish.  I was casting my X-Rap by the rocks to see if I could get some stripers.  I actually did end up with 2 or 3 small stripers by doing this.  Nothing big enough to compete in the striper division though...

 

It is pretty neat under the bridge.

 

I have heard many times that when jigging, it's important to find an area with strong current, and the tournament was to be held between the high tide and the low tide of the day.  I figured somewhere between, the current should pick up and I should find the motherload of rockfish by the rockpile.  So, my new plan was to wait patiently at the rockpile for the current to pick up, so that I can jig up my prize-winning striper.  It was 10AM by this time, and I was prepared to stick around for a couple hours for the fish to get hungry. 

 

My smallest catch ever.

 

While I waited for the current, I did try jigging the bottom to see if I could catch anything that might bite.  The rockpile has a really steep slope that goes from 1 foot by the rocks down to  50+ feet deep.  So I got to practice jigging some deeper water than I'm used to.  I wasn't really seriously fishing this whole time, since I didn't think the big fish would bite during slack tide...so I practiced reading my fish finder.  I figured out how to watch for my jig in the water column on the display, and practiced vertical jigging the bottom.  I also figured out that about 1-2 feet of the bottom was covered with some kind of seaweed - that was the reason the bottom was showing kind of spotty on the fish finder. That's good to know for some other time when I'm fishing an unfamiliar area.  At one point during my jigging practice, I hooked a small crab in the middle of its bottom.  Can I claim that I caught a small crab on a BKD?  Haha.  Well, that was pretty much the only excitement I got the rest of the morning and early afternoon.

 

I caught a Chesapeake Slam!  Just not a grand one...

 

I waited and waited and waited patiently for the current to pick up, and by 1PM, the rain was starting to fall, and I had no confidence that the tide would change in time to get back for check-in.  So, I packed up my jigging rods, put my X-Raps back in the water and made the hour-long paddle back to shore.   I did pick up a 10.5" bluefish on the way to complete a slam. but the total length was nowhere close to being competitive.  Ah well. 

 

It was around 2PM by the time I got back to the launch, and I wanted to get some more pullage, so I went back to fishing for perch along the rocky shoreline.  I pulled in a few, and finally called it quits.  I rolled my kayak back to my tent and packed things up to get ready for the awards ceremony.  I didn't do quite as well in the raffle this year as I did last year....but the prizes were really great.  The tournament staff did a great job pulling together sponsors to donate some nice items.  They also improved the duration of the ceremony this year, and we were all wrapped up by 6PM.  Another great tournament held by the CBKA staff!

 

The drive home was about an hour and a half, and it went by quickly.  I had a good time just reminiscing on everything that happened during the weekend.  The fun fishing, the beautiful weather, the fun conversations, the delicious food, and the friends I got to see again.  It was a long-awaited weekend that was enough to recharge my sanity from work and home life.  I love my wife and kids, and I am blessed to have a good job...but I'm lucky to be able to take a break from both to do something else I love - fish in a kayak.  I kept some of the perch I caught on Friday and Saturday to take home for my family, and my boys devoured them after we fried them up on Sunday.  I hope the tournament will still be around by the time they are old enough to join me.

Bay Bridge & Bellevue

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Sorry there are no pictures with this report...I did take some pictures, but the white balance was way off on my camera, and it would just hurt your eyes to see them.  I'm going to have to fix that before the tournament next weekend...

I had two goals for this trip - catch some fish for the dinner table, and get at least a little bit of experience fishing by the Bay Bridge before the CBKA tournament next weekend.  My mother-in-law is coming to town again, and she likes it when we cook her up some fresh fish from the bay.  It was mainly for that reason that my wife allowed me to take a day to go fishing, when I'm going to be spending another whole day fishing the following weekend (it's very rare for me to get 2 kayak fishing trips in a month).

The day started at 4:30AM when I met Chexone from the MKF forum at the Bay Bridge Marina for launch.  We were planning to meet a couple others from the forum at 5, but we were still the only ones there by the time we finished rigging up so we headed out.  I had fished in the dark just once before at Point Lookout State park, so it was still a bit daunting to be paddling out before dawn.  Luckily the full moon provided enough light to see where we were going.  Still, what made me even more nervous was the large waves that were chopping up the waters in the bay outside of the marina.  As I was paddling out into the bay, I thought to myself "I'm crazy...I'm going to turtle...at least Chexone's here to call for help if that happens."  I honestly think I would have turned around if Chexone had not been there with me.  I know others have paddled through much worse, and I'm just being a sissy because it was my first time in those conditions.

As we were paddling to the bridge, I put out a silver Rat-L-Trap crankbait to see if I could get a striper to bite on the way out.  I also tried casting it near the pilings when we got near to them.  I didn't get a single hit on it, so I switched gears to try jigging with a BKD.  I've read Shawn Kimbro's book, I've watched videos, I've done it with smaller jigs for other fish...but I just couldn't figure it out at the bay bridge.  I would position myself to face the bridge against the current, cast next to a piling, let it drop, and bounce it back toward me, paddle back up-current, and repeat.  I went piling-to-piling, and after a while got tired of trying to fight the current.  I kind of wished at that point that I had a Hobie kayak.  Chexone had gone ahead of me further toward the middle of the bridge, so I decided to catch up to see if he'd had any luck.  He hadn't caught anything, but he suggested that we try further down the bridge where there's a deep drop-off.

We went over to the drop-off, and I tried jigging again, again to no avail.  I ended up snagging my jig twice, and decided to give up on jigging for a while.  At that point I noticed a flock of birds some distance away.  I decided to check them out to see if they were on any fish.  Unfortunately, it seemed like as I paddled closer to them, they'd fly away from me, and it didn't look like they were feeding...so I gave up on that.

At this point, I wanted to give up on trying to catch the monster striper, and fish for some perch in the shallower water.  With perfect timing, Shadyfisher85 from the MKF forum showed up and asked how we were doing.  We told him that neither of us had caught anything, so he suggested that we try for some perch in shallower water.  Catching perch is more familiar to me, so I happily joined him.  We all jigged the pilings in shallower water, and caught a handful of perch, small stripers, and Shadyfisher caught a nice red drum.  When that slowed down, we headed closer to shore to try  some other shallow areas for perch.

On the way in, I saw some breaking fish and a flock of birds picking up baitfish from the water.  This time there had to be fish around!  So I cast my jig around the splashing fish, and caught my first bluefish of the year.  After that, I caught several feisty juvenile stripers.  It was fun actually catching fish, but it also soon got exhausting trying to chase them around.  They were moving all over the place, against the current and wind too.  I didn't want to venture too far from the others, so I gave up after a little while.  I paddled back to the shore where Chexone and Shadyfisher were, and we jigged for some perch for a little while before heading in to call it a day.  On the way in, I let the current push me through the inlet as I tried to jig up some more perch.  I hooked up with the biggest fish of the day - a 15 inch rockfish.  Unfortunately he flopped off of my hawg trough before I could snap the picture.

We all went back to the marina and were off the water by around 10:30.  Shadyfisher was going to go home, but Chexone was going to try another place for some perch.  By this time I had about 5 fish on the stringer and thought it would be nice to catch a few more to impress my wife, so I asked to join him for his next trip.  So we were off to the Bellevue ferry...

Bellevue was a beautiful place.  The shoreline is not very developed, and it was just a quiet place.  It reminded me of the Severn a little...just not as busy.  We crossed the river from the ramp, and entered a creek on the Oxford side where Chexone had some good luck on a previous trip.  It was low tide when we started, and we could see that the water was pretty low...so the fishing was pretty slow at this time.  We both still managed to catch a couple perch here and there, and I caught an occasional small striper.  When we were about to call it quits, Chexone suggested we try a spot on the way back that he had caught several fish earlier.  After a little while, we were both catching fish - the fishing seemed to be turning on.  We kind of forgot about heading back in, as we were catching perch non-stop.  As the sun rose higher, I remembered that I told my wife I'd try to be home for dinner, so I had to head in.  Chexone was going to stay out a little longer, so I paddled in before him.  Chexone had a good time after I left, as the fishing got even better.  It had been a long day, and it was a long paddle back in...and an even longer drive back home.  It was great to be on the water again, and even greater to have caught some fish.  I added 5 more perch to the stringer at Bellevue, and my son was happy to see them when I arrived home.

I accomplished both of my objectives for the day.  I'm  not confident about the tournament next weekend, but at least I have some idea of what the fishing should be like by the bay bridge.  I also scaled and cleaned the fish when I got home, and look forward to having some fish with my family and mother-in-law.