So here's the plan.... launch at 5:30 with a bushel of beauties and some crabs from the asian market C/O Capt D Jr. Last day of 4 on the tog and we have designs of making hay with the toothy critters if we can locate them but are commited not to invest the entire day with the hot Bass bite going on.
Brother Jay is out for his opening day adventure and AMPED. Capt Don Jr of Tastee Sub fame and T-bone (famous for his WHAAA
I haven't caught a fish in hour!)
fill out the crew and looking to put a hurtin on the fish. We arrive at the destination and drop hook on a promising piece. Surface water temps on the outside were off 6 - 9 degrees from the bay but still in the zone. The arsenal is assembled. Bait is readied by T-bone (I think he has a part time job as a Sushi chef the way he slashed and dashed with the knife). He had the clam strips juliened in no time and the shells set aside for a clam shell rain shower to get things going.
Tide just topped out. Reads were reasonable, current starting to move and hopes were high. A couple of sniffs. The FF routinely feedback data that told an entirely different story. Bass on the move. T-bone puts out a bait on the fishfinder rig. Jay swings and misses on TOMBO (Crab/Clam on a TOG RIG). Capt D gets a bump and ends up going to the skating rink! My gear is changed out to paddle shad then a crock to see if we can get a jig going on the passer by's.
Jay's back down in search of the bohemth blackie. From the stern, T-Bone grunts out "Fish On". His Talevera is arched nice and the game begins. Fish stayed tight to the bottom and he's humping. Nets out, fish finally shows it's stars and stripes. Nice fat bass breaks the no-fish log jam! Boot Camp boy aka Jay goes into the crouching tiger hidden dragon mode, feeling that, burned into your muscle memory thump, thump, thump and sets the pin on another fish. He's jacked thinking he's got the stink off with his first tog for the boat. Line starts to peel and he works back line crank for crank. For his efforts another nice bass is added to the locker. Jay's day is made and we just got into it by an hour. We poked around here for another hour without a single targeted species interested in what we had to offer. Adjustments made no difference, I suspect the temps need to be a little higher for where we were. Go figure.... catching bass with tog presentations on an inshore wreck but we'll take it.
Enough time committed... pulled the hook and headed back to the mouth of RB to catch the last 2.5 hrs of outgoing and setup for an attempt at the bucket mouths. A decent fleet setup around the Knoll. Cruising through the area perimter looked promising. Some scattered marks. Decided to slide pass the fleet probably to the dismay of the crew and return to the scene of the crime on our last outing. We have bait out in no time. Tikki gets the early bump. Donnie gets the next. Fish are here but nothing on the screen to prove it. We each take turns like batting practice fighting fish. Sometimes double headers. We missed our fair share. Ended up returning 3-4 shorts. We lost 2-3 on shake offs and one better fish on light line break off. Ended the day with 7 nice fish and a happy crew. Sometimes you just go with your gut and crunch it out while at Boot Camp.
