08-23-2008, 10:09 PM
After eight productive trips to Hogan I suppose it was time for a skunk, although the fish tried to do their part.
The short story: I had three good strikes that stuck long enough for me to begin working the fish to the boat. Every single one came undone within seconds. That is very frustrating – especially when I was using the exact same rigs I had used the last two weeks and reeled in five stripers. And I don’t remember a single fish coming unbuttoned the past two weeks. I’ll blame it on the unusually heavy amount of bait in the water; perhaps the fish were not striking to feed, but were hitting so lightly that the hooks just didn’t stick deeply.
Incidentally, the hooks are barbless on my new Pro-Troll rigs. I changed them to barbed hooks after this trip and I hope that will correct this problem.
I’ve never seen more bait balls than I did this trip. They were everywhere it seemed, and when I did find the stripers they were just inside the mouth of the river arm feeding on the abundant bait – which I believe are shad. I marked the bait everywhere I went. And there was a 3/4 moon this trip as well, so the stripers had been very well fed during the night and not exactly on the prowl for the anchovies I offered.
A seaplane entertained me during the early morning. It was a beautiful twin-engine plane with massive floats. He practiced landings and takeoffs a few times, and then was gone. A photo of that beautiful plane is on my website.
Later, a couple Calaveras County Sheriff deputies launched their boat to retrieve a rather nice looking cabin cruiser that apparently had been abandoned at the shoreline inside the upriver arm. I don’t know the story of that boat, but the sheriff had a flatbed trailer along, and I believe they somehow loaded it onto the trailer and soon after they were gone. I didn’t see them when they left. That was a strange incident.
Maybe next week I can land some stripers... I hope the barbed hooks will do the trick!
Photos on my homepage - including the ramp situation: [url "http://www.fishwisher.com/"]http://www.fishwisher.com[/url]
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The short story: I had three good strikes that stuck long enough for me to begin working the fish to the boat. Every single one came undone within seconds. That is very frustrating – especially when I was using the exact same rigs I had used the last two weeks and reeled in five stripers. And I don’t remember a single fish coming unbuttoned the past two weeks. I’ll blame it on the unusually heavy amount of bait in the water; perhaps the fish were not striking to feed, but were hitting so lightly that the hooks just didn’t stick deeply.
Incidentally, the hooks are barbless on my new Pro-Troll rigs. I changed them to barbed hooks after this trip and I hope that will correct this problem.
I’ve never seen more bait balls than I did this trip. They were everywhere it seemed, and when I did find the stripers they were just inside the mouth of the river arm feeding on the abundant bait – which I believe are shad. I marked the bait everywhere I went. And there was a 3/4 moon this trip as well, so the stripers had been very well fed during the night and not exactly on the prowl for the anchovies I offered.
A seaplane entertained me during the early morning. It was a beautiful twin-engine plane with massive floats. He practiced landings and takeoffs a few times, and then was gone. A photo of that beautiful plane is on my website.
Later, a couple Calaveras County Sheriff deputies launched their boat to retrieve a rather nice looking cabin cruiser that apparently had been abandoned at the shoreline inside the upriver arm. I don’t know the story of that boat, but the sheriff had a flatbed trailer along, and I believe they somehow loaded it onto the trailer and soon after they were gone. I didn’t see them when they left. That was a strange incident.
Maybe next week I can land some stripers... I hope the barbed hooks will do the trick!
Photos on my homepage - including the ramp situation: [url "http://www.fishwisher.com/"]http://www.fishwisher.com[/url]
[signature]