Highlight Followed by a Blooper

[BarefootPetr]

Yesterday afternoon I went out of Homeport with my ice rod for some perch fishing under docks. The fish were most cooperative, hitting my bladebait any which way I fished it--especially on the fall. At one dock I felt a nibble and dropped it back to let it eat. I set the hook and it was a much better fight than everything else, because it turned out to be a 20-inch striper. Hell of a fight on that 3-foot rod and 6lb mono! I got it to the boat and was ecstatic. As I leaned over to release it, my rod was sitting at an odd angle and I dumped it. The water was too deep to stand, so I tried dragging for it to no avail.

My buddy is coming out with his magnet to drag the area, but I'm not optimistic. Good thing Dock Runners aren't expensive.

[ronaultmtd]

The sacrifices to the fishing Gods we all have made...

[J.A. Veil]

Nice job on the fish. I've had probably ten rods go overboard from my kayak or boats over the past 19 years. I have been successful in over half of the cases in recovering the rods. I tie my heaviest lure onto another line and cast it out. I try dragging the lure slowly along the bottom, trying to snag the line on the other rod. Good luck finding it with your buddy.

[john from md]

I got a really large treble hook and epoxied it to a 2 oz lead sinker. It is great for retrieving overboard rods. I only had one bad occurrence and that was when I latched on to a large branch. When I saw what was coming up on the fishfinder, I just cut it loose.

[Mark]

Some of my most memorable stripers have come while I was fishing structure for perch in shallow water.

But never on a 3 foot rod! I hope you get it back.

[dsaavedra]

Well I went to Homeport yesterday to try with the magnet but the normal combination lock was nowhere to be found, instead the gate was locked up with a lock that required a key . I'm going to get on the phone with the county parks office and see what that's about.

I'm pretty confident I can recover that rod with my 350lb pull magnet. I lost a rope stringer out in the main Bay while fishing a pound net, then 2 weeks later while fishing the net again, a guy in a boat was fishing right where I dropped and he it snagged it and handed it back to me. I couldn't believe it hadn't been moved by currents.

[john from md]

Dave,

There is always a keyed lock on the chain maybe for workers to get in, I don't know. The combo lock is usually at the other end of the chain.

Could this have something to do with Pittman's latest change on Covid protection measures?

I just checked the county web site and it has a new combo and no messages. 8743 currently

[dsaavedra]

John, I don't think so. I've been there several times over the past couple weeks and always saw the combo lock and the key lock, as you describe. Yesterday the combo lock was nowhere to be found.

I just got off the phone with the parks office and the lady said that a ranger went out earlier this morning to look into it (I guess others called about it too?) and said everything should be good to go now. She also said they just changed the combination to the lock too, so maybe they needed to physically switch locks to do this. Or they lost the instructions on how to reprogram the old one

[john from md]

Thanks for the update Dave.

I was at Quiet Waters this morning catching 6 to 9 inch Perch and six inch Bluefish. Little croaker were nibbling at my bait but were too small to get on.

[BarefootPetr]

Update on the gate: The new lock is up and the new combo works