Blue's Weekend Striper Trip

[Blue_Runner]

Sorry it took so long to put this up, but its a long report *;D

In an effort to take up some of Airslot's slack, me and 10 other guys headed to the coast last Wednesday evening to aid in the "natural selection process" in the stiper population that is heading down the coast. *


Wednesday December 13th

Knocked off work around 4:15pm. *Worked tirelessly all day Wednesday making sure everything on my checklist was packed and ready. *Toothbrush - check, deodorant - check, rods n reels - check, etc. etc. *Thank God for preparation. *I didn't forget a thing, which is quite incredible for me. *8) *

We hit the road around 6:30 and pointed the full-sized doge east. *My wife and I only have one vehicle right now, so my friend Snead volunteered to pull the V-21 for me. *Nice guy, that Snead...also a striper virgin, but a nice guy nonetheless.

Anyway, we arrived in Nags Head around midnight. *As soon as we arrive the plan was to lay down the law on a couple of cold beers while preparing the boat for the morning. *Remember guys, preparation is the key. * ;)

So, we get the full enclosure on and pack everything into the boat for morning. *Fairly uneventful. *Alot of the other guys had already hit the sack - bunch of light weights.

So, I get everything done and everybody hits the sack. *I wasn't quite ready so I stayed up for about another hour until 2-ish. *During that time while I was outside I decided to look at the stars. *Some of the other guys had already mentioned seeing shooting stars so I thought I'd try to see one.....well, I didn't see one. *I saw 25 + *!! *I stopped counting at 25 and must have saw 4 or 5 more after that before turning in! *This detail is important, as you will see later in this story.

Was seeing 2 - 3 per minute with a few "earth grazers" mixed in. *Very cool *8) *After that, I hit the hay too.


Thursday, December 14th

Awoke around 6-ish. *Quick shower and brush my chops and walk outside. *In a word - FOG. *Dang fog, I hate it! *But, there was NO wind, which was very good. *So we decide not to get in any hurry and head off for some breakfast. *A little eggs, some sausage and gravy and all set. *Back to the room to purge the bowels and by 8 am we're heading to the ramp - stille foggy.

At the ramp we get the boats in and started making our way out. *Visibility was not terrible but not good. *I think it was 1/4 mile - coulda been worse. *We know there's a shortcut to the inlet, but not having it marked and no boats to follow out we had to take the long way.


Long story short, my buddy in his 19ft Grady White Tournament named "Runnin Rock Fish" makes a wrong turn and puts his boat up on a flat *snicker* *;D. *He trims it up and is shooting sand about 10ft in the air and we were pretty much rolling in the floor. *So he makes it off the bar and gets back in line. *At this point I'm leading. *Well, yours truly misses the turn for the inlet and we are heading for Pirates Cove *:o *But only for a couple hundred yards........before I put the SS Blue Runner up on a bar myself *>:( *Payback time, Joey and company in the Grady are now rolling in the floor laughing at me - guess we got what we deserved. *It was a very soft grounding, mainly the skeg, so we trimmed it up and made it off in no time flat and got back on track.

We make it out to the bridge at the inlet. *The marker bouys are not marked on any of our Garmin GPS units. *Strange. *I thought they were? *So we have a fair amount of trouble finding the first one in the thick fog. *Then we found the second one. *Luckily, the inlet looked like a bathtub (what we could see of it). *Smooth, slick calm. *I stood in the cuddy with the hatch slid forward in order to find the markers. *We found them all and made it out. *

Again, the ocean is smooth, slick and greasy calm. *So we decide to head north. *We headed north and headed north some more. *Making about 30 mph and 3700 RPM's we ended up 40 miles north and hadn't seen another boat, any birds - nothing. *

A pic of the exited crew *::). *In the pic, we are doing 30 mph but it was so calm it was almost like riding in a car!

My main man Corey on the right, Robin the bro-in-law on left. *I don't know where Snead is?


Pic of my bud Joey's Grady under way:


Pic of how the ocean looked behind the boat:


I told the other guys that my limit would be 40 miles one-way and my buddy in the Grady also has a 150 with 62 gallons of gas so we stopped there and put the lines in around 10:30am. *The other boat with us, Kencraft Challenger 206 named "Two Moons" carries 90 gallons of gas with a fuel inject 200hp Evinrude, so they have a little more range than us.

Had 3 knockdowns before noon and lost all 3 *>:( *Couldn't figure out what we were doing wrong? *Finally, we got one in the boat. *17.4 lbs. *Nice! *My brother-in-law Robin loses his linesider virginity!


The next 3 knockdowns turn up to be big bluefish. *We gave them a quick release boatside and no pix, sorry. *I don't like to bring them in the boat. *They are so darn fiesty its not a good idea IMO to bring them inside the boat with those treble hooks flopping everywhere.

Runnin Rock Fish managed 1 keeper as well and Two Moons lucky tail managed 6 somehow *::).

A shot of Two Moons:


Robins gesture of "#1" in the pic tells it all - we only caught one on Thursday. *

Captain, proudly displays the catch:


On the way back in around 5pm we fell in behind the sporties and were able to mark the shortcut for the next morning.


Friday December 15

A new day has dawned and we decided that we must have missed the morning bite on Thursday. *So, the plan is to get an earlier start. *My crew didn't have breakfast on Friday, opting to eat a sammich on the boat during our 40 mile ride. *We end up at the fishing grounds about an hour and a half earlier than the day before - not bad.

Lines in and off on the troll. *This day we got our fish to the boat. *Had 3 right off the bat with one being 19.5 lbs. *Again, there was a lull in the middle of the day and just as we were about to leave around 2:45 pm, we had one more "day saver" as I called it.

Final tally for day 2 was 4 for us, 4 for Runnin Rock Fish and Lucky @ss Two Moons limited out with 8 *>:(

Blue Runner's catch (check out Tweety - she hung with me the whole trip!):

Snead (striper virgin) with his first:

Me left, and captain Runnin Rock Fish on right:

Two Moon's catch:


Before the trip, we bought 2 Storm electric fillet knives on sale at Bass Pro Shops for $9.95. *I highly recommend these knives as they make short work out of an other wise tedious task.




Saturday December 16th

Building on our previous experiences we all decided to eat boat food for breakfast on Saturday in order to make it to the fishing grounds even sooner. *Everything was going according to plan - no fog and an early start, until we turned north outside the inlet and started to lose power to the engine! *Ok, deep breath, what's wrong?! *I had to pull it down and she was running real ruff! *I had Robin go inspect the primer. *He's back there for like 2 or 3 minutes and I finally have to yell - hey, what's the deal?! *Is the primer tight? *He's like, yeah, its pretty tight. *So, I go inspect and the thing is collapsed! *So I must have an obstruction. *I grabbed the screwdriver and unhooked the gas line from the inlet to the fuel water separator - the line that runs between the separator and the fuel tank. *I gave it a big blow and could feel the crap blow back into the tank. *Then I could hear the tank bubbling so I figured problem fixed, hooked it back and off we went. *Didn't have any more trouble thank God! * We were down approximately 15 - 20 minutes - not bad!

Finally underway the seas had picked up with a north wind and we could only make 20 mph at first. *Not long into it, we could only make 18 mph and finally had to slow to 14 mph which made for a slow ride. *

We did however manage to bang our way 40 miles north before 11am, which was quite an accomplishement, considering.

We start off on the troll and quickly had a hookup. *The fish was on for every bit of 3 seconds before the line went limp. *Upon reeling in the line I realize we've just lost an expensive stretch 30 *::). *But there are no fray marks on the end so I surmize that it probably wasn't a bluefish and the line just broke. *

So we tie on another. *While tying, the line broke again! *I think to myself, this line is bad - its a borrowed TLD 15 reel so I don't know how old the line was. *I tie on anyway and we re-deploy the lines. *Not long after, we had a big knockdown. *That sucker went down like it was hung on the bottom. *Matter of fact, Snead thought it WAS hung on the bottom until he felt the fish flop! *We get this slob to the side of the boat and he's staying down, won't come up, can't see him. *I did see one swirl but no tail, no nothin. *He's right beside the boat when - POP! *Line broke again! *Dang it! *I was ticked and so was Snead. *Musta been a big fish. *At this point the TLD 15 went in the rod box and out came one of my Penn setups. * We lost 3 lures that day - Two moons lost 5 and Runnin Rock Fish lost 3 as well. *Around $150 worth *:o

We keep at and lose at least 3 more fish before finally putting one in the box. *Runnin Rock had 2 and lost 3 trying to net them boatside. *Two moons had a rough day with only 2 fish as well - but they did manage the biggest fish of the trip at 23 lbs - lucky bastad!

Blue's feesh:



Robin with Two Moon's biggun and Cory looking on:



Me with Two Moon's biggun and our little un:


Snead and Two Moon's biggun:


Robin and Cory with a couple:


Robin (striper virgin) with his first:


In summary, the trip was awesome, weather was nice, nobody got skunked, we got to fish all 3 days, everybody caught a fish, burned 120 +/- gallons of gas, rode over 300 miles on the boat, saw around 29 shooting stars and caught 29 fish between 3 boats and 3 days. *The fish ran average of 18 lbs. * 29 X 18 = 522 lbs of fish. *We all got to take home a nice bag of fillets.

What more could we ask for? * :D