Pacemaker Fishing Forum

I finally had the chance to get out in my kayak! I went to the Bay Bridge Saturday morning and it was shaping up to be a typical trip- depth finder having issues, multiple trips to the car for forgetting stuff, etc... but then things got better! Here's the report I wrote for another kayak group.

Fished Saturday morning from 6 am - 11:45 am at the Bay Bridge.

Launched from the east side and started looking for spot at the shallow pilings. They were everywhere! I was using night crawlers that I had left over from a fishing trip with my nephew and fish bites, but it didn't matter, they would have hit anything! I caught about a dozen in 10 minutes and put them in my bucket/aerator live-well. The two other guys I was with made bait and we decided to head to the sewer pipe because we'd never fished this side of the bridge before.

Found the pipe, but not much going on. Lots of bait everywhere with some small blues nipping at them. After one guy lost three spot to blues we decided to head for the pilings because they were filling up fast!

Got to the bridge and found a set of pilings without boats on them. My friend almost immediately hooks up with a nice fat 22'' rock! It looks like it's not going to make it so we keep this one for dinner. Then he hooks up 2 or 3 more times. I keep working the double span I am in and soon I have a fish on also! Woops... this one wrapped me and broke my line. I had 2 other breakoffs before I finally got a fish! 20" and fat, decided to keep this one too because the hook (despite being a circle) was in the top of his throat and it took me a little long to get it out. I'm sure the fish would have made it, but with the water temps in the 80s it seemed more responsible to keep it. I lost that hook and put on a larger circle hook after. All hook ups in the corner of the mouth after that.

I caught 4 or 5 live-lining and then ran out of spot. I decided that since we were having such a good day that I would try throwing this custom jig a guy I know down on Smith Mountain Lake makes. It's called the swamp monkey and I was using the spunky monkey pattern with a white ice fluke. On the second cast I got a small bump and set the hook. The fish shot straight underneath me and out of the pilings. I paddled out and began going for a small ride! It was a lot of fun on my light rod that I'd been using to make bait. It ended up being a 27.5'' rock and the largest of the day!

After this the fishing started to die down and we caught maybe 2 or 3 more rock. The blues kicked up and we caught a bunch of those and decided to call it a day. It was a great day in the kayaks and I can't wait to get back out there! It seemed we were catching more than most as I only saw a few boats land fish. I think we probably could have caught more if we'd changed locations, but we all had things to do later in the day.

Here's a link to the swamp monkey so you can see it - http://corefishingtackle.com/CoreSwampMunkeys.html

And some pictures:

The pipe:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_LtCJkp6ExRo/TFYHZ … 310423.JPG

Friend with a nice 23"

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_LtCJkp6ExRo/TFYKm … 310428.JPG

Largest:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_LtCJkp6ExRo/TFYHZ … /photo.JPG

Dinner:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_LtCJkp6ExRo/TFYjY … to%204.JPG

I'll make sure to post more information (or John will since he is organizing) about the upcoming meet and greet scheduled for the 14th.