First Ones

Wednesday, May 9

Bright, sunny, and warm. I spent a couple hours working on my friend’s oyster farm – hand picking oysters for the market. The southwest breeze and clear skies made the flats look tropical due to the contrasting colors of the sand and water. When the flats finally submerged under the flood tide we all parted from the sand bar and I motored back around Captain’s Flats. And this is where I found the fish. Birds were working the water and fish were boiling. A team of four stripers playfully chased a squid next to the boat as I tossed my first cast which produced a striper in the low 20s. A couple casts later, another, but larger. The action only lasted 10 minutes. The schools relaxed and either stopped feeding or moved on.

Later that day I returned with friends A. and C. By this time (5:00), the southwest wind had increased significantly and this resulted in large seas in the middle section of the bay. We decided to hug the leeward coast, beginning at the mouth of the Jones River. Two follows and a couple strikes there, but the water was brown and murky and the fishing was somewhat uneventful. We traveled east along Kingston Shores and found a couple of small schools on the surface. Follows but no hookups. They disappeared quickly. Then I noticed a cloud of birds out near the Nummet and as soon as we arrived A. was into a large fish. It measured 26” or so, and after some spring testing of C.’s Bogo-grip pneumatic gismo gear, the fish was safely released to J. and A.’s relief.

We cashed it in there and slowly motored back to the landing under rose hued skies.