weekend wrap up plans a, b & c

[bigfish4me]

Plan A.....the original plan was to try and get the bammer on some stripers sunday morning. Since i had a rare saturday off and a buddy was doing a shake down run i hopped on board and figured we would get dialed in on them and it would make for a much easier outing for the next day. April and May brings the herring up into the delaware river to spawn, followed closely by the stripers which are eating the herring and spawning as well. We made the 12 mile run upriver, dodging logs, 50 gal. drums and god only knows what other kinds of flotsum. We jigged hard for about 3 hours with sabikis and only had 6 herring in the 10-12" range to show for it....when they are there thats about 10 minutes worth of bait...they just have not made it up there yet i guess. Since we were going to loose the tide we headed down to a flat that is usually a sure thing, just as i suspected it was barren...we fished cut and live herring for about 5 hours and the only thing we caught was a good tan...or sunburn lol.

Plan B

since the stripers and herring were not there yet i figured i would take the bammer and my niece down the river and catch a few carp....pound for pound in the river not much else peels line like a carp.....after an hour and a half without a touch the girls were getting antsy...and bored so it was time for plan C.

Plan C
The food chain, i told the girls to try and find some worms..so they started kicking over rocks and in no time they had enough worms to head to the creek and catch some chubs...the chubs in turn will be tossed at some bass in a local pond. When we arrived at the creek next to the pond....there are a few guys with a minnow net and bread totally reeking havoc on the chub hole....they are extremely net shy...point is they had the same thing in mind as i did, if they made the lap around the pond before us it would be beat street for sure. So it was a race....who ever got bait first would get around the pond first, we went to a upper hole i keep in my back pocket for when bait gets scarce and in a few minutes we had a dozen chubs in the bucket. I was quite surprised how weeded up the pond was this early in the season which made sight fishing tough...the bammer did manage one small bass, and my niece lost a solid 3 pounder when she wiffed on the hook set....only other thing we got was to teach a lesson to the bully of the pond...it was touch and go for a bit and he almost got a piece of me...but once i got ahold of his tail it was game over.

[gottaflylee]

God, I love stories like this, it's all about the kids...
Great report and pictures...

[bigfish4me]

Thanks Lee, you know more and more fishing for me has become about teaching my kids and nieces and nephews, if you would have asked me 15 years ago if it could be more rewarding to watch someone else catch a big fish i would have said no.....after watching my daughter progressively get better and better it just makes it that much sweeter....my grand father use to just sit there and watch me trout fish when i was in my mid teens....he said he loved watching me smoke all the grown ups and still giggles about it....i am starting to realize the apple didnt fall so far from the tree.