Variety of fish (including a slam) at the HRBT

I met up with Rob Choi at the HRBT around 10pm to look for some schoolie striper and whatever else wanted to bite (we are a little behind on Kayak Wars). The night started off kinda slow with scattered striper in the light line. As I got closer to the island, I found some schools of some nice trout. I never caught any of the bigger ones I saw, but there were some in the 20" range at least. My first fish of the night was a small grey trout that I caught on my newly created "Woody" lure.

That blood blister is gone...I just checked.

"There's a trout on my boot!"

After messing around with Woody for entirely too long (heh heh), I decided to fish for real. I put on a super fluke and hooked a couple nice striper and more bluefish than I care to talk about (any number of bluefish is too many to talk about). It was really a sub par night to say the least, so at about 1:30-2am Rob and I decided to head in.

On the way back, Rob was bouncing the bottom with a gulp swimming mullet and caught a couple small flounder. I am a horrible flounder fisherman, but I figured sure, why not. Within a few casts I hooked flounder, a sea bass, and an oyster toad. It was better than catching bluefish, I guess.

After just a few minutes, I hooked something nice on a piling right next to the first boat channel. I had no idea what it was at first, but it was strong. I felt head shakes so I knew it wasn't a ray (thankfully). After a nice fight in, on, and around the pilings, I finally got it to open water and landed it. I caught my first puppy drum for the year! I almost forgot how tough they are!

25" puppy drum

After 30 minutes or so, Rob decided to call it quits, but I just couldn't quit quite yet. I continued to fish close to shore and hooked a striper, several small specks, some flounder, and a few small grey trout.

This was all during slack tide, so it was a pleasant surprise. I really didn't want to hang around til the tide started moving again, but it was so close... I kept fishing for flounder, catching a few up to 17.4999" here and there, til the tide started rolling. Once the tide was coming in at full force, the striper came to the light line as always. I wanted to catch as many as I could before I had to leave so I could rack up some Kayak Wars points. They were hitting really well so I decided to use my new lure to see what I could get. It was getting hard to fish because of the wind, but I still managed to catch about a dozen striper up to 27".

It was a good night with a good variety. I caught a bunch of bluefish, several speckled trout, 3-4 grey trout, an oyster toad, a nice puppy drum, 15ish striper, a small sea bass, 10 or so flounder, and a seagull! I was feeling great but it was getting late. I had to be at work in 2 hours and I was an hour away from home so at 5:30am I called it quits. Not a bad night for a weekday!

Less sleep = more fish!