Trolling Report - Bloody Pt - Thomas Pt Areas

[drichitt]

Today (Fri 12/4) I had aboard Reeltor (Paul) and TFer Rick Hensley. Launched from SP around 6:30 this morning. We ran down the channel ready to put our spread over soon as we saw some good marks. Did not see anywhere near as many marks above TPL area as I had seen two days ago, so we ended up running much further south than I expected. Ended up starting slightly below TPL out in the channel and picked up our first 2 fish within the first 45 minutes or so. We then went without a bite for the next few hours as we zigzagged the channel avoiding nets and an ever growing flotilla of boats. We confirmed with others, including Mlag (Mark), that the bite had gotten tougher. We decided to get away from everybody, so we worked our way further south to the BPL area. Finally on the western side of the channel in about 54' of water we happily found ourselves all alone with a nice bunch of bait and fish. Had a steady pick for the next hour, or so, picking up another 6 fish. It all came to an end when the last fish hit a planer line and proceeded to cross-over another planer line and screwed up everything. Since this fish had it's weight distributed across two lines, we had a very difficult time getting the rubber band to break. Once we got the lines all cleared up and back in service we were unable to relocate the schools of fish and bait that had been so good to us. We heard the bite was going well further south, but decided to slowly troll north as we were running out of time. Talked to Baldzilla who had followed the school south and they were spanking them good. It was hard to keep the bow pointed north, but within a half hour we came across some good marks that netted us our last 2 fish.

Total of 10 fish for the day, all in the mid to upper 30 inch size. Hot lure was a 3oz white mylar chute (from Alltackle) with a 9" white shad, run as the top bait on a tandem rig, on the boards. I run three of these in my spread at various lengths from 50' to 150' back. These 3 baits accounted for 6 of our 10 fish. You cannot ignore that statistic fellow fishermen. 9 of the 10 were caught on the boards. It was an absolute pleasure fishing with Paul and Rick, both very accomplished fishermen. Rick commented to me that each of us could have had tape over our mouths and we would have caught just as many fish. Everybody knew what they had to do to make the day a success, and a success it was...Don