Backstrap - Yum

[5th Tuition]

I haven't been posting much lately Fishing has been great. The last two trips have been absolutely perfect fishing excursions

On Wednesday, we put together a fun fishing trip with a bunch of buddies on John's boat (Patent Pending). One of my friends onboard had been with us on a previous trip when John cooked us some fish. He said, the next time we go, I'll bring some deer backstrap venison to cook on the boat.
John had caught some spot for us the night before, so when we got to the boat, we headed right to Tilghman Island for our rock. We limited out in less than a half hour
Now these fish aren't huge, most were 22 inches with a couple on either side. Fun to catch on light rods. We slid out of our position as quietly as possible and handed off our extra spot to Jason (Rockin Robin) in his 27 Judge. We ran toward the channel and Rick (FishOff Gloves) was out in his boat and called to tell us he had acres of breaking fish. We were off
We started trolling and put some nice blues (15-18 inches) in the cooler. My friend Kenny is a butcher for Giant Foods and he cuts deer on the side. He said its time to eat. Sure enough, he had venison shishkabob with him. It was pieces of backstrap deer with cream cheese and hot peppers stuffed inside. On the outside, he wrapped each piece with bacon and skewered them. They were placed in the pan until the bacon was crisp, and served. Talk about delicious. We all ate our fill, and even had some leftover.
We trolled until we had about 50 blues, and called it a day. John, not to be outdone by Kenny, invited us all back to his restaurant for deep fried fresh bluefish and cold beer We sat around a table out on the deck and ate, drank, and relived the days events.
We all went home fat and happy!

Today was a charter. It was a repeat group that had been with us in the spring. All were good fishermen and work for a company that does piers, bulkheads, boat lifts etc.
We needed to catch our bait, so we ran to Holland Point, just north of Chesapeake Beach. Some charters have been catching spot just outside the Deale jetty, but we have been doing well south. We were catching them two at a time and filling the livewell up fast. Tawn called. He was at the jetty, but struggling. Catching a few spot, but not wanting to spend any more time than necessary on getting bait. When I told him how we were doing, he put the hammer down and soon I saw "Hell's Bell's" (I spelled that wrong didn't I) skipping in our direction. I motioned for Tawn to drop in behind us, and soon I saw bent rods on Tawn's 27 Judge
We put 50 in the livewell and bid Tawn farewell. He called to check on our destination, and said he would be following us shortly.
We arrived to find about a dozen boats anchored up. I quickly spotted "Big Will" (Charlie Schneider's boat out of Tilghman). Charlie's captain, Willy Roe, is an old charter captain that knows more about the Bay than John and I put together. We slid up on Willy's starboard, and before our anchor came tight, we had two fish on the line. I try to have three spot hooked up and in three buckets (so no tangles) ready to put out as we anchor. Captain John was concentrating on anchoring and watching his fishfinder. He yelled back, "Fish under the boat", and I yelled back, "two fish being netted"
It took all of 10 to 15 minutes to put our 12 fish in the box. No overs, if that's what you are looking for, but nice fish none the less. First time this year I have seen this happen, as the guys caught their two fish, they gave up the rod so the others could land their two. Like I said earlier, these guys were fishermen. We pulled the hook and slid out as quietly as possible. A 25 ft Maycraft pulled his anchor and slid right into our hole I called Tawn and told him we were done, but he might be able to squeeze in beside between Big Will and the Maycraft with his Judge. Tawn was already on his way across the bay.
We slipped out into deeper water and found our breaking fish. However, most fish were small (14-16 inch) rock. We played with them for a while, then decided we needed to look for a better concentration of blues.
Ran down near Stone Rock and started to pick up nice blues, but only one blue at a time. This has been odd this year. Blues mostly run in packs (schools), and when one rod goes down, multiple rods usually follow. We picked at them for a while, and John said it was time to start cooking the crab cake lunch.
I love the "food" charters. I get to take the wheel while John cooks. I noticed he was searching in shallow water (16-20 ft). It doesn't take a genius to figure I'd try deeper water. I swung out into 30-40 ft while John set up the cooker. Before he could put the oil in the pan, we had one rod go down, then two, three, four, five, six (all we had out). Some rods had double blues Captain John was shaking blues into the box, and resetting rods. I swung back, and again all rods go down, it looked like a Chinese Fire Drill in the stern of the boat. John looked at me and said, "This is hard work", and I replied, "I like it up here at the helm; get those rods back in the water". John said, "If I knew all it would take was giving you the helm, I would have done that an hour ago"
John is pretty cool about that, we banter back and forth all day. His personality and mine mesh well. We have fun when we fish.
John finally got the crab cakes finished and stayed in deeper water. We wore the crew out with blues and finished the day catching more spot for tomorrow's charter.
At the dock, everyone was talking about the day. John takes the fish back to the restaurant and cleans them while I clean the boat and tackle. I got back to the restaurant in time to see the guys cleaning up after eating some of the days catch. They rewarded me with the largest tip in three years of mating. They can't wait to go again this fall.

Thanks for staying with this long post. I hope you gleaned some information from the text. I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, tomorrow may be totally different than these two days. Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.
Get out this weekend and take advantage of the bite.
5th (Marty)