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Fishing Report: Early bird gets the worm

Provided by: Anderson Guide Services
Posted on:June 23, 2010
Region: Connecticut  /  Hartford County

I very rarely run a charter on the weekends. The ramp is usually a zoo, and the water is too crowded. I am just spoiled from having the place to myself during the week. Stan and his uncle, Gary were entered in a striper tournament for this weekend and somehow ended up talking me into going out on a Saturday. The forecast looked good and the tides were perfect. I convinced them that it would be worth our while to launch earlier than normal so that we could get our bait and be first on the reef. I was confident that we could put a couple of quick fish in the boat before anyone else showed up. The guys met me at 4:15 and we shoved off shortly after.

The bait catching went well for once and we loaded up with enough for the whole trip. Sunrise this morning was at 5:15. We started our drift just as the sun was coming up and seconds later we hooked up with a double. There is nothing better than doubling up on the first drop! Gary shattered his personal best fish with a 42? bass but Stan’s was a bit longer at just over 44".

That was a great start, but things got better quickly… On the next drift, Gary hooks up with a powerful fish that was screaming line off the reel at a pretty good clip. I got him up on the bow and fired up the Yamaha to chase the fish down. We were in fairly shallow water and I’ve lost some big fish by them running the line across the tops of the rocks. If you can get a better angle on the fish and pry him up off of the bottom, you have a much better shot. Gary kept pressure on the fish a couple of minutes later we were vertical with the fish again. It didn’t take long after that. Another big fish for Gary, this one went 46 1/2"

We had a couple of smaller fish and it began to get crowded so we ran about a mile to a shallow reef and put some lighter lead on… We only had one more fish in that spot but it was a hell of a fish again… Stan hooked up and we had to chase this one down too… This almost topped Gary’s fish, missing by 1/2? . It was only 6:30 and we already had 7 fish in the boat, 4 of those were over 42 and of those, 2 were 46".

That was the last fish of the morning… We tried deep, shallow, in between, everything I could think of. We ended up covering 27 miles but that was it for the day. We decided to head back in at 8:45 in hopes of getting the boat on the trailer before the ramp got out of control. Gotta love those quick hit and run trips! I have a full schedule next week, it should be interesting!