Tweet
After being lazy most of this year i finally dusted off the kayak and Codfish2011 and i made the pilgrimage to Point lookout to fill our bags with fat croaker...
This time last year we killed them there so we left with high hopes. The little weather bug on my phone said it would be 5 to 10 knot winds on Friday night. I should have listened to my VHF weather band instead.
We got to the park around 10:00 to find a nice stiff breeze and a small craft advisory. It did not look bad and they were lifting the advisory around 2:00pm so we ventured out into corn field harbor. We were drifting really fast but we hooked up with some nice croakers on the first drift. good stuff it will be a great day we thought.
Wrong.
1:00 pm came and the weather got worse and to add to that we had a 15 to 20 knot wind blowing out the mouth of the river followed by an outgoing tide. This was causing us to drift extremely fast. 1.3 to 1.5 mph. We would paddle back around the harbor entrance and start a drift. 20 mins later we were approaching the shoals.
At 2:00 we had enough and made the slow trek back to the ramp. It took us an hour to go from outside the swimmers beach to the ramp. All into the wind and current. Not fun. My forearms are killing me today.
Even with the conditions we managed 12 nice sized croakers between the two of us. I'm sure if the weather cooperated we would have killed them. They were all in 25 to 27 feet packed in a 1/4 mile area. We just could not keep on them long enough.
On the way out we saw someone rigging up a red trident on the causeway. Was that anyone here? If so you definitely picked the right side to fish. the bay side was calm. Nothing like the mess on the river side we just got out of.
Seeing we were already down there and it was only 3:30 pm we decided to hit Solomons for a try. We got there around 4:30 pm and made our way out in front of the pier. What a difference location makes in regard to wind direction. Solomons was nice and calm. I felt like i was paddling 7 mph. Nice and relaxing but the fish were not there. I picked up 2 perch (8 and 11) some baby croaker and plenty of toadfish... Codfish picked up more toadfish than i could count, two small rockfish and one nice croaker towards dusk. We packed it in around 8:30 pm and made the trip back to northern Virgina tired from the days adventure.
On a tackle note i tried out the jigging stick i built this spring and i loved it. Very nice setup and it will work great at the BB this summer. I also experimented with a drop shot rig for croaker. I had mixed results on it. I caught the two perch on the rig at Solomons but i could not fish it effectively at PLO due to the conditions. I will have to hold judgement until i can test it again.
Video Recap
This time last year we killed them there so we left with high hopes. The little weather bug on my phone said it would be 5 to 10 knot winds on Friday night. I should have listened to my VHF weather band instead.
We got to the park around 10:00 to find a nice stiff breeze and a small craft advisory. It did not look bad and they were lifting the advisory around 2:00pm so we ventured out into corn field harbor. We were drifting really fast but we hooked up with some nice croakers on the first drift. good stuff it will be a great day we thought.
Wrong.
1:00 pm came and the weather got worse and to add to that we had a 15 to 20 knot wind blowing out the mouth of the river followed by an outgoing tide. This was causing us to drift extremely fast. 1.3 to 1.5 mph. We would paddle back around the harbor entrance and start a drift. 20 mins later we were approaching the shoals.
At 2:00 we had enough and made the slow trek back to the ramp. It took us an hour to go from outside the swimmers beach to the ramp. All into the wind and current. Not fun. My forearms are killing me today.
Even with the conditions we managed 12 nice sized croakers between the two of us. I'm sure if the weather cooperated we would have killed them. They were all in 25 to 27 feet packed in a 1/4 mile area. We just could not keep on them long enough.
On the way out we saw someone rigging up a red trident on the causeway. Was that anyone here? If so you definitely picked the right side to fish. the bay side was calm. Nothing like the mess on the river side we just got out of.
Seeing we were already down there and it was only 3:30 pm we decided to hit Solomons for a try. We got there around 4:30 pm and made our way out in front of the pier. What a difference location makes in regard to wind direction. Solomons was nice and calm. I felt like i was paddling 7 mph. Nice and relaxing but the fish were not there. I picked up 2 perch (8 and 11) some baby croaker and plenty of toadfish... Codfish picked up more toadfish than i could count, two small rockfish and one nice croaker towards dusk. We packed it in around 8:30 pm and made the trip back to northern Virgina tired from the days adventure.
On a tackle note i tried out the jigging stick i built this spring and i loved it. Very nice setup and it will work great at the BB this summer. I also experimented with a drop shot rig for croaker. I had mixed results on it. I caught the two perch on the rig at Solomons but i could not fish it effectively at PLO due to the conditions. I will have to hold judgement until i can test it again.
Video Recap
Comment