Toggin at the 1st island!

This time every year for the past 3 years I get a job scaring people for Halloween. Last year and the year before i worked at Busch gardens for howl-o-scream (where i met my wife). This year i kept it close to home and got a spot at the haunted swamp. I always have a ton of fun scaring people but i have to say...it cuts into my fishing time a LOT. Luckily for me i don't have to sleep much:)

I worked during the day Friday then got to the swamp at 7. I worked til 12am and headed home to try to get a few hours of sleep. I think i got about 3 hours of sleep but I didn't care cause I was going fishing! Rob Choi invited like 4230 kayakers to go tog fishing with him and I'm glad he did! I met up with Rob, Billy, Kyle, Tripp, Jason, Joe and 4224 others at oceans east. I was about 5 mins late and wish i had got there sooner. That morning alone OE sold 70 DOZEN fiddlers. I got the last 3 dozen and they were TINY.

We got to the launch and started paddling just before sun-up. It was a nice calm easy paddle all the way out. As soon as everyone made it to the island and dropped down they started hooking up! One after another all in the same area. I'm sure there were several doubles cause the action was hot! For whatever reason it took me what seemed to be 30mins of not catching while everyone else already had at least 2-3. Eventually i got into them just like everyone else. Kyle Sawyer and Rob Choi were the hot rods of the day and ended up with 25+ tog each! Kyle had one that was 21 1/2"! Pig tog!

One of my favorite things to do is catch fish next to powerboaters. That morning we all did just that! There was a 30'+ boat with an inboard motor that puled right up next to us without saying a word. He heaved his anchor right next to us to try get on our spot since he saw us slaying the tog. We surrounded the area with kayaks and he had no way to get any closer or cast in out spot. We continued to catch and release keeper sized tog right in front of him for about an hour til he gave up and took off empty handed. That is a good day if i do say so myself:) The total tog count was probably 75 or better (At least 50 of those were from Rob and Kyle) . Everyone caught tog to bring home and most of us caught our limit. I ended up with my limit of 4 that ranged from 16"-18". GOOD TIMES!!!!!!