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Striped
Bass Charter - Saturday May 26, 2007
4:30am
– We met up at Foodworks on 25a to grab some breakfast.
After buying sandwiches and some much needed coffee we made our
way down to Britannia in Northport to meet up with Captain John Alberda
of Sound Charters. We had
two charters reserved, one for the morning and one for the afternoon.
The morning crew was made up of R. Courtemanche, H. Einhorn, C.
Turner, J Hlenski, J Higgins, and G Wood.
We met Captain John and then waited a few minutes for his mate
John to show up with the bait. His
mate John showed up a couple of minutes later with some bags of freshly
snagged bunker. Once we had
the bait we loaded up the boat set out to catch some bass. As
we made our way out of
Northport
Harbor
towards the Long Island Sound were able to watch an amazing sunrise over
Ashroken.
Britannia
|
Leaving
Britannia
|
CT
|
Northport
Harbor
|
JH
|
Ashroken
Coast Guard Station
|
GW
and HE
|
Sunrise
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Our
first stop was just west of buoy 13 in front of the Ashroken Coast Guard
Station. Here we set up
three rods with bunker chunks on circle hooks attached to weights with
fish finders. We got a few
hits and some weak run offs but nothing would stay hooked.
After about an hour and a half we had only landed a sea robin.
Captain John had good luck at Buoy 15 the day before so we decided
to give that a try. We set
up at Buoy 15, which was a fifteen just outside of Cold
Spring
Harbor, and dropped some new chunks. The
area was completely packed with people due to the holiday weekend.
Despite the number of boats there we only saw two bass caught.
Neither fish was caught by our boat.
Waiting
for bass |
JH
on wire |
JH
and CT on wire |
HE
on wire |
After
about an hour of sitting, we gave up and headed back to the triangle.
We tried some more chunking but again got nothing.
With only about an hour remaining in the trip, Captain John
decided to switch over to wire line and parachute rigs.
We trolled them back and forth through the triangle and about
fifteen minutes into trolling Gordon yelled “fish on!”
We had spent over four hours on the boat with nothing to show for
it but now we finally had something on the line.
Gordon fought the fish for about five minutes before Mate John
was able to get it netted and onto the boat.
It was a bass and it was definitely a keeper!
The bass was 33” and weighed 12 pounds.
It ended up being the largest bass of the day and the first NSAC
record striped bass. We continued trolling wire for another half an hour
and R. Courtemanche caught another bass that was just short at 26”.
At around 12:30pm we headed back to Northport to drop off the
first group and pick up the second charter.
Capt
John and John working hard to find fish |
GW
fighting bass |
John
netting bass |
Bass
in net |
GW
Bass |
GW
with Bass |
RC
with 26" bass |
RC
with 26" bass |
The second charter was made up of K. Wood, J. Wood, D. Sonne, C.
Booth, and J. Higgins. We
left the dock at around 1:30pm and headed back out to the triangle.
The sun was now blazing and the temperature was easily 90
degrees. Luckily we had some
frosty beverages to keep us cool. We
started out drifting chunks again but had about the same luck with that
as the first group did. This
time we had stronger run offs but only caught one bluefish.
We kept this up and tried a bunch of different spots but caught
no bass. Once again, with
only about an hour left in the trip Captain John switched us over to
wire. We trolled around the
triangle and, just like the last time, within fifteen minutes K. Wood
was hooked into a fish. It
ended up being a keeper bass. The
fish was 29” -6lbs and was K. Wood’s first keeper bass.
Our trip was supposed to be over at 6:30pm but because we had
just caught our first fish Captain John extended the charter.
We continued trolling wire and ended up catching another 26”
short bass.
JW |
DS |
JW
and CB Jigging |
CB
fighting bluefish |
Although
we did not catch as many fish as we had hoped for, we did
catch some bass and had a great time.
-JH
JH
26" bass |
KW
first keeper! |
Sunset |
Sunset |
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