Two New Anglers...
By: Capt. Hap Farrell
Friday the 6th of August I had the Austin and Johnson families out on a half day trip. We left Rock Harbor a little before 6:00 am. and headed for Billingsgate Shoals. The shoals has been fairly active for the past few weeks and I figured it would be a good place to start. This turned out to be an understatement, big time...
We started at the west end of the shoals just north from where the old wreck buoy used to be. Once I got to the north edge I turned to the northeast. This is where I first hooked up. The first fish was about 31 inches. We were jigging and had wooden head hootchies in the outriggers. Just as the first fish hit the deck the second jigging wire hooked up and right after that one of the outrigger lines went off. Two more keepers. Both in the low 30 inch range. After that all hell broke loose.
Once I had all four lines out it did not take long before both outriggers hooked up then the two jig wires, four on.
They were all keepers, or should I say 3 bass and one really big bluefish. I had six people on the boat so I could keep 12 bass. Within 45 minutes we were close to our limit and we had released some bass that were just barely legal. We were culling for size. This is really good fishing.
There were two young girls with the group, Emma Johnson 14 and Alissa Austin who is 13, and they had not done much fishing. Well, this has changed. Emma landed the biggest striper of the trip, 38 inches, and Alissa's fish was good size also. Alissa got treated to fishing behind the sea clammer and took a really nice fish on some really light gear. Two fisherpersons are born...
