I'm Back!

Ski, Derek, and a different Pete met Walleye Pete at Solomons at 4:30 AM. He headed north out of the Patuxent River, and our first stop was one of the small remains of James Island. I hadn't been in the neighborhood since early last year, and I was surprised at how little remained above water (to be fair, it was nearly high tide.

We popped up a couple of stripers in the area, but it clearly wasn't the way to go, so Pete headed off across the Little Choptank River just as the sun was rising.

To a site on Ragged Island, between the Choptank and the Little Choptank.

The Stripped Bass were biting there, on top water lures, which is my favorite way to catch them. Ski even picked up a nice 21 inch Speckled Trout, on a small rubber jig.

From there, Pete headed hard south, to a place well south of Solomons where he had recently been catching blues and a few Black Drum. We couldn't find the drum, but the blues were there in some numbers, and we got more than enough for dinner tonight, and a rack for smoking. No one else wanted to keep any.

Derek and Ski

From there, we stopped at buoy 72 to molest a few undersized Weakfish and Black Sea Bass.  We hit a couple of shallow water sites on Hoopers Island on the way back hoping for Specks, but I caught only a single striper. We went around the backside of Hoopers to the Hooper Island Bridge, and then back across the Bay, to be in port by 1:30