Pacemaker Fishing Forum

After hearing about Mo's successful trip with his brother last Sunday I have to admit I was very excited to go out perching again. Mo and I met up at 4:30am in Fairfax and made the drive to Chaptico. We made great time and arrived at the Chaptico Deli before 6. We got our bread pudding and ice and headed to the launch.

For this trip we were using Mo's new canoe. It's not quite the fishing machine that Carl's boat is but it did a great job of getting us to the perch and was surprisingly stable.

We started out by fishing the out-flowing current at the classic sandbar. Mo and I both caught stripers on our first casts. Mo was using the classic beetle spin approach while I tried a 1/8th oz Rat L Trap. I am happy to report that both the perch and the stripers liked the small RatLTrap although I switched lures when I realized we have both forgotten to bring pliers.

Mo and I continued to catch non-keeper stripers for probably 20 minutes before Mo had a crazy idea. He decided that we should paddle the canoe into the out-flow and back into the lagoon. I told him that I had investigated it on google maps and the lagoon was surprisingly large. We paddled into the current and pushed our way into the lagoon. It makes a sharp bend to the left with a deep channel on the outside of the bend with a steep brush and tree covered bank above it. On the inside of the bank is shallow sandbar. We started to fish the normal submerged shoreline trees and brush and caught perch after perch after perch.

This is the stuff we were fishing:



And this is what it produced:



The lagoon was quite large:



Mo absolutely crushed me as far as numbers and size:





He even caught a striper that had migrated back into the lagoon:



We paddled to the back of the lagoon but the bottom got very silty and shallow so we went back towards the opening of the lagoon to fish the channel.

The tide was getting pretty low and the sandbar was now covered by only a couple inches of water. I decided that it would be easier to cast to our targets if we got out of the boat and waded on the sandbar.

So that's what we did!



We stood on the sandbar and made short casts to the opposite bank where the water was deeper. Mo must have caught 20 fish from that one area including this nice one:



It was good to get out and be able to make precise casts and thoroughly fish the area...also, the cool water on my feet felt pretty good on a hot day. It felt very strange to be wading for white perch but it sure was fun. It was also fun to be INSIDE the mysterious lagoon--the mouth of which we had fished dozens of times.

I think we ended the day with over 70 fish including close a dozen or two short stripers.

Here is the new canoe strapped to Mo's new truck:

Last edited by Dominion Dan (Aug-13-10 7:02PM)