Bill Dabney joined me on Tuesday 9 May to hopefully get some bluefish blood on my new boat. A trip last week with Dave Spendiff, Bill and I started with calm winds that soon turned to 40 mph gales forcing us to limp back home. Dave couldn’t join us today for our early start due to his therapy session – physical that is – but he planned to leave on his own by late morning.
Bill and I first hit the bridge by Hochstrasser’s marina and the Ship Bottom boat ramp. Several long trolls through the area yielded nothing despite some nice readings. We then went up to Gulf Point and made multiple passes close to shore from the condos along the point and back to the 42 buoy. There were 3 boats drifting by 42 but we did not see any fish caught. As we were making plans late morning to return to the bridge area, Dave called to say he had boated one blue and had another on the line. Dave was fishing off the Surf City water towers. My Evinrude 300 had us there in no time at speeds approaching 50 mph – what’s a few more gas dollars anyway!
We followed Dave’s troll using a Hopkins on one rod and a Clark spoon on the other. Almost immediately we hooked up or at least had several follow ups. After catching one on the troll, we would plug the area and have follow up strikes. We were fishing a quarter of the distance from shore to the ICW. Water was 4-8 feet deep, cold at 56-58 degrees and very clear so that you could see bottom along with the striking fish. We boated multiple fish from the smallest at 5 lbs with most 10 – 12 lbs.
The real key to this story is the power of networking with other club members. Had Dave not called, we probably would have returned to the bridge area and missed out on some fantastic fishing!
