14 December Striper trip

well...steady and I hit the water about 1130 or so....we ran north a bit and put a spread out....we finally figured out that 6 knots with sea witches, islanders, spreader bars and Penn International 80's wouldn't work so we put some Penn 6/0, TLD 25's and a few other odds and ends out. We trolled for a couple of hours and finally got hooked up to one of them there stripper fish. First one of the season and only one of the day. Water was 52 and nice....Entertainment provided on Channel 68 by Fatbeard and about 300 of his friends....Congrats to Jeff and CIRWIN for a great day at the high rise....we fished ocean side of Smith Island....Bob

Oregon Inlet 8 December

really crazy day yesterday...we missed the fleet heading out and I didn't have any tracks for OI left on my GPS. So..about 5 small boys pulled out and started the run out of OI...well, one of the boats a couple of boats in front of us went out of the channel and went into the mud on the right of the channel as your heading out....chain reaction and 3 or 4 boats including me went into the mud. Had to trim the motors way up and back out of there.....so we get out, run the crack and get up on plane...well Still Think'n is listing hard to port, appears one of my trim tabs had mud or something in it which prevented from coming all the way up...stopped the boat and Otter gets over the side and clears the planer. Jeff and Todd and crew on black pearl comes by to make sure we were OK..tks for that buddy, appreciate the assist. Get back up on plane and everything is running great.....get lines in and start the troll...well, we find a huge POD of porpoise with only a couple of Charter boys on them...we start to work them and the big boys (Charters) were pushing me all over the place man...I would turn right and they would dog me...it was pretty bad. so we left and went north to the 750 line and were working behind a trawler with no luck so we went back to the 700 line but went deeper than most other boats and found Black Pearl out there working a POD of two tones. We spent a couple of hours working them by ourselve (with black pearl) before we come tight on the TIKI bar. This fish was pulling hard man...we thought it was a beast..get him in the boat and find the line had wrapped around his gill plate which he was so hard to get in. I don't know how the line didn't get cut as the gill plate is pretty sharp.That was about it for the day...about 15 minutes after I get a fish in the boat here comes the fleet and they were on us again.....tough day out there for sure....but had a blast, ERIC did great dealing with my crew of scalleywags and all their hijinxs...Otter got right back in the swing of things after some time off and DON and Steady as always were on their a-game..well other than the naps they both took while we were fishing ! Guess they need nappy time....tha's gonna wind it up for 2007 offshore....but 2008 is only 3 weeks away