This morning rocked!

[nay_sayer]

I put in at the park on Herring Bay at 7:30 this morning with the intention of jigging the jetties at the entrance to Herrington Harbor South. After paddling the 200 yards over to the jetties I cast my spinner bait and caught a 17 3/4" striper on the first cast. 2nd cast hooked another striper that broke the line after 45 seconds of fighting. Switched my other rod with a Rapala x-rap crankbait in olive green and started getting some hits on that but couldn't stay hooked up with anything Then it happened...

I got the crankbait caught on the front handle webbing on the yak and while I was trying feebly to get it out I saw the water boil about twenty yards ahead of me-not the school of baitfish I expected but the biggest school of stripers I had ever seen. Not the little dinks either, these all looked like keepers.

I threw down the stuck rod and grabbed the other one...Oh s#1T-I never tied anything on when I lost the spinnerbait!

I had a chartreuse BKD on a jighead sitting in the floor of the yak and I grabbed that and franticly tied it on. Every cast for the next 25 or so minutes resulted in a keeper striper between 22 and 27 inches!!! I caught 10 or 11 in all before the school was gone as quickly as it showed up.

I kept a 27" and a 23" for gifts to my neighbor who takes me out on his bass boat all the time. I don't eat fish so it hadn't dawned on me that I had nothing to put the fish in to get back to the launch and I would have to keep the fish under my legs in the yak for the paddle back, not an easy thing to do wearing shorts!

Needless to say, the fish jumped ship halfway back to the launch and my neighbor will have to wait for this evening to see if I get some more when I go back out. This time I'm bringing a srtinger!

[chex]

WOW awesome! Sounds like a fun time. I wonder what was on the other end of that broken line...

[mmanolis2001]

Great job putting the screws to them today. Sounds like you had a rodeo there for a while. Nothing like casting into breaking fish especially when there schools of fish in that class.

Be careful out there this time of year in them shorts. That water is getting dangerously cold now.

[Memory Maker]

All Riiiight!!!!!! ........ glad you found them

[DOGFISH]

Thats great, when that happens!

[Meadeo]

Sounds like some awesome fishing man!! Keep it up.

Meadeo

[nay_sayer]

Clarification

It was brought to my attention by a concerned member that the wording in my post could be taken as me culling stripers or attempting to take more than my limit of stripers for the day.

Just to clarify:

The fish were unharmed, VERY lively and only out of the water for a few minutes when they escaped. Had the fish not made a high-speed dash back to the jetties (Herring Bay is crystal clear right now down to 4 or 5 feet, I could see them clearly), I would have gotten them back. Had I gone back out in the evening as I was planning, I would have had a "clean slate" as far as the 2 fish limit is concerned. Had the 2 fish not escaped, I would not have taken any more stripers. Since the fish did escape, I regret the time that they were out of the water and the stress it caused them but they swam off to be caught another day.

Additionally, no fish were culled. I attempted to keep the 23" one instead of one of the other larger ones I caught after him because he was in my boat already.

I fish responsibly and do not want to make the wrong impression. The stripers are here because of the regulations that were put on fishing for them. I agree with the regs and follow them.