Wednesday, April 01, 2009
It was the best day of fishing in my whole life. Period. How else to explain leaving the port late, trying a bunch of places on Stellwagen Bank as "early-season-reconnaisance" and catching nothing there, then getting serious and catching a boatload of haddock in a couple of hours? We had one drift in which we dropped to the bottom and immediately hooked a haddock within 10 seconds. We did this for an hour. There were only three of us. We could have doubled our catch if we added a second hook with bait. The fish were that thick.
It was fun, that's for sure. Of course, because I was fishing, I didn't fillet the fish during the day. Keeping that many fish to fillet all at once wasn't fun. Luckily, all three of us filleted in the parking lot at Green Harbor. (and made a mess out of the boat). We really focused on the light tackle today. I went through all of my new Okuma rods and reels--some light stuff to see if it'll hold up. It did, though we were only catching haddock. I was able to get away with using 6 or 7 oz jigs all day. That was the best--30 pound braid and it was easy to hold the bottom. Still, I'm sore today from reeling in.
Let's hope for good weather this spring; the fish are there. The jigs that I was using were a new design by Stingo-Fish. Last year, I used a lot of diamond jigs with great success. Dave Stingo designed these jigs to be "diamond jigs on steriods". Yes, they'll be used for tuna this summer. They are that tough. Check out his designs at Stingo-Fish Lures. Another great thing about today...we used very little bait--each bait caught us a fish and we didn't lose one lure. That's a first.
See you out there; good luck finding the fish if you're out there on your own boat; I'll see you on the water. Capt. Rich Antonino, 508-269-1882
