Results of Fishing 8/30/07

August 31, 2007 by Scoutmaster.

Results of the Fishing Scout meeting held Thursday evening 8/30/07

From Doug:
Stumpy’s and my crews arrived a few minutes early and we were underway shortly after 6:00. Although the boat was more crowded than expected (total 7) there was plenty of help. We went out to where the birds were hitting the water, I was thinking we might hit a school of chopper blues. That didn’t happen, and it was probably a good thing. As it turned out, two of the three boys had never fished off of a boat and really didn’t understand “bottom fishing”. They wanted nothing to do with handling a blood worm, especially after it was cut into bait sized pieces. Once that hurdle was overcome, the hooks were baited, and lines went in the water. It took a while to get them to “feel” the fish, but once they got the hang of it they started pulling in some white perch, and some good sized spot. By now they are keeping the hooks baited and in the water and catching, at least something. The next hurdle was to get them to take the fish off of the hook. By the time they learned how to grab a fish to take it off of the hook and put their bait back on. we had moved out to another piling and drifted some more. By now everyone had caught a few along with at least 2 “bottom fish” that took the gear along with the bait. They decided that they were not going to take any fish home, so we kept them in a bucket of water to take back and put in Dan’s live well to be used as bait later. By sunset they had enjoyed the experience and were ready to return to the dock. I’m pretty sure that they all had a good time and actually learned a little something. The next step will be teaching them to clean and cook some for a meal.

From Chris:
Debbie B. called and said Bill couldn’t make it, so like Jim, I having talked the parents involved, proceeded. We went out SE of Bodkin Creek day markers 3 & 5 because terns were around and hitting the water (but not dense). They were probably skimming bait fish. Anyhow my usual lures for breaking fish didn’t work; bait got us a couple spot. At that part Bryan called Chris from my house, apparently hadn’t seen the last e-mail, had started at Shipley’s, told him that Jim might be waiting at Ross cove. By then we saw Doug and company over by marker 7, so we stopped by there and pulled a few spot and white perch. The scouts were unimpressed, had bigger prey in mind. So we went to 7Ft Knoll drifted past the rock pile using lures, then shifted to bait as we got past the rocks. We caught some OK white perch on bait. As it got to be sunset, two of the boats clogging up the rockpile left so we spent a little intimate time with the rockpile. Charlie and Chris each caught a 14-17 inch Rock. On one pass, I couldn’t stand it any more, so I put my favorite lure in may favorite spot and hooked up. Not surprisingly it took about 6 sentences of instruction / argument to get Ed to put the spincasting rod he had in a holder and take my rod. With lots of free advice from the boat on the other side of the rockpile (they apparently felt that, having hooked a keeper, I had a moral obligation to boat it and fooling around, letting the kid make mistakes was just wrong). Ed reeled the fish in and we got her aboard, a 22″ rock. At this point fishing had the scout’s attention and we made a few more passes catching 3 more undersized. The older scouts instructed me to flyby Doug so they could taunt both his crew and the PETF (People for the Ethical Treatment of Fish) crew. Went home and helped them clean the fish. A better than average time was had by all.
Chris

From Jim:
A quick summary of our fishing last night. Kevin and Phillip arrived at about 6:05 but we waited until 6:30 for Bryan’s crew before casting off without them. Went to the long bar near Blackhole Creek and immediately started catching some nice White Perch and Croakers - mostly doubles. Many of the White Perch were bronze backs. Neither Kevin nor Phillip wanted any but I brought back 6. As I had a dozen bloodworms and more than a dozen nightcrawlers we used strictly bloodworms for bait (they don’t keep as well as nightcrawlers). Phillip mentioned that he had tried to clean some of the fish from the last trip but couldn’t so I gave them a demonstration of the scale method on a White Perch and the fillet method on a Croaker. They quit fishing about 8:00 so we headed back and got to the dock about 8:10, unloaded at the dock then started for the slip. I had told Paula that I would be back by 8:30 but she got there to pick up the boys as I was pulling into the slip. The tide was so high that I had a hard time clearing the overhead cable. Both boys enjoyed themselves, even though Kevin had to bait his own hook and take his fish off this time.

From Stumpy:
The roster on the “People for the Ethical Treatment of Fish” boat ended up being me, Laura and Baby Ruth, Mr. T., our institutional rep Gordon and his wife Peggy, and the crew - Tim. Tim had the helm from as soon as we cleared the berth until it was time to back into the berth again. We had a lazy sail out toward 7ft knoll and back. The wind was light but we still had a good time and got in a bit of crabbing. We used the combination crab pot and dredging technique. This is when you attach a crab pot to your rudder and then dredge it along the bottom of the bay. We didn’t catch anything. Maybe we can get in some real crabbing on the upcoming Family Campout on the Chester river.

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