The best: It was a beautiful August day.
The worst: It was a beautiful August day.
For once we caught a decent break and didn’t have to contend with high wind, rain and thunderstorms. But that also brought out the thundering herd of watercraft of all varieties and it made fishing somewhat miserable. However that’s getting ahead of things. After Paul and I motored out of Pocahontas Marina we headed for the Thomas Point lighthouse to do a little bit of trolling for striped bass along the edge of the channel before settling in for some Croaker fishing. The water, at this time of the day, was pretty calm but that was about to change.
We spent an hour running Bucktails and Sassy Shad patterns but had no bites so we decided to join a large scrum of boats that were anchored up on the flats just off the main channel. In a few minutes we were hauling in some pretty decent Croakers. However as the day progressed the boat traffic increased to the point that what would normally be a calm day on the Bay turned into a swell-chopped mess.
It was a wonderful day to be out on the water and people were taking advantage of it. So many boats were blasting up and down the channel, and across and sideways, that we were slammed by wakes of every size and intensity. Several times I had to really hold on to the railing or I would have taken a header over the side. And the chop made hook removal a very tricky operation.
We pulled anchor and moved closer to shore but boat traffic in the Bay Bridge area was thick and it really made no difference where we decided to fish. We pulled in a few more Croakers but towards the early afternoon the bite tapered off and suddenly stopped. We would catch a fish now and then but the action was slow--maybe a fish every 45 minutes no matter where we tried.
With the number of boats increasing, and the number of Croaker bites decreasing, we called it a day and headed back to the marina.