Officially Autumn

The weather read the script for the 1^st of September, cooler with some rain in the forecast as well as a potential swing to the east in terms of wind direction. We passed on the live bait collection; Joe had kept a few in a cage at the dock and we hadn’t needed it so far.

To start the day, we made a perfect drift along an island with the ebbing tide casting as tight to the shoreline as I could with Joe’s $110 glide bait. Joe called it perfectly on a little point of rock where he said there should be a fish waiting.  Just at that I had the first fish of the day as the sun came over the horizon, good start.

From there we were offshore, inshore, tight to the shoreline, up the coast for miles and even tried trawling large X Raps for Porbeagles around wrecks. These were being caught with some regularity using this method, so on a day like this it was worth a shot. Joe had also packed two heaver set ups for Bluefin as a few had been spotted recently. The truth is the ocean was completely dead everywhere we went, no birds, no bait. With the early starts, rain and throwing heavy lures and no action, I was starting to feel it. It was at that point I made a cast to rocky bay and snapped off Joe’s glide bait. It was in about 6ft of water, and I was set to go in for it. Joe took the boat in, and we kept an eye open for boulders. He wasn’t having me do then honours but fortunately there was some braid floating which we were able to pick up with another lure. My lucky lure, big pink had survived!

We made a run back to the islands around the harbour to pick up on the flooding tide, I wouldn’t say I was hopeful. However, when you persevere good things can happen. It had been 4 hours since I had any sign of a fish, things can change quickly.

We continued that drift as Joe tied a new FG knot and I managed to hook another big striper from a stretch of beach he hadn’t caught from before. His mate sniped the action, I had no idea where he was, he also got a good shot of us with Boston City in the background. 

And that was kind of it, or so we thought. When we got back to the moorings there was a lot of activity with bunker splashing around but no signs of stripers. That changed when I threw the glide bait in for one last chuck and it got smacked within a few turns. Joe also hooked up on a live bunker while he was on the phone. The fun continued for us both till we had enough and called it a day. You know your lucks in after a tough day and you find fish 30 yards from where you started at 5.15 am

Another blinder of a day, pretty much out of nowhere. Joe went to his house on the way back to my digs, picked up a bag of cold beers and gave them to me. These were made for a fund raiser for a Great White Shark tagging program, I got tagged. I woke up at 5 pm starving after polishing them off. Daytime drinking and early starts, I was on holiday after all.