Pacemaker Fishing Forum

All I heard on the radio last night was how nasty the weather might be on Saturday morning...impending doom was the call of the TV weather guys....a hurricane is out and about in the Atlantic Ocean.

I got to Carl's around 4 AM and after a little cleanup (Summer tipped over a potted plant); we were on the road....a wet road. It rained on and off all the way to Chaptico but it stopped once we got the necessities at the Chaptico Deli. They had what we wanted, their homemade bread pudding, and we bought some.

Once we launched, the 1sty place we hit was the duck blind by the little creek. Surely we could get some stripers on top water since the sun had not yet come up and it was cloudy. Perfect conditions....NOT! We could not buy a bite. So we switched to perch lures and we still couldn't buy a bite. Finally we caught a few but it was slow. We were on an incoming tide.

The river was calm and it would stay that way most of the morning.

I wanted to fish St. Margaret’s Island but last time Carl tried it, he and Mo almost got swamped. I knew we couldn’t get that today since we never had anything more than a 3” wave. But we settled at Whites Bar and picked up a few more perch.....between us, we had maybe 15. I had a comfortable 5 perch lead most of the time. Carl would do anything to catch up....



Finally, I convinced Carl to let me run up to St. Margaret’s and off we went. On the 1st pass of the lee side, we picked up one perch so we then tried the left side....



.... and got 1 or 2 more. There are two peacocks in that picture.

Carl then said to head back to Bikini Beach but I really wanted to try the lee side one more time. After a little convincing, we started fishing and catching many a white perch. So many that my 5 perch lead dwindled and I suddenly found myself down by 12! No more of this so we moved back to Whites Bar....



....and I started to catch up to Carl. I got to within 2 perch!

We started back toward the ramp, stopping at a few known honey holes, when Carl hooks into what appeared to be a keeper striper. I grabbed the net and was ready to land the beast but I looked at Carl’s line and it had slack on it. The striper beat him down. It took a few minutes for the adrenalin rush to subside. We kept fishing and suddenly, I was up 54-53. At this point, I declared that the day was done but Carl, who was dead tired by now, insisted on trying to tie me. So that he would not feel bad, I started striper fishing and messed up my line which caused me to retie a blood knot. While I sat there, helpless without a fishing pole in my hand, Carl retook the lead, 55-54 and declared that we had to go home.

Let me tell you what it’s like to fish with Carl. This picture….



…..is a visual of what happens if you get out too far in front of him. He is very good with a fillet knife! Often, he would tell me to do different chores while he kept fishing as he tried to catch up to me. More than once, he offered me cold drinks and food and told me to “take it easy”.

When I came home, my wife looked at me and thought I had gotten into a fight. I have several bruises on my legs and arms, all caused by Carl.   

Today was good, we started really slow but the numbers started getting better as we explored new holes. In total, we caught 109 fish; 1 blue, 3 stripers (non keepers) and the rest were white perch.

A stop at T & J BBQ finished out the great day!