Well its the upcoming full moon on wed. night of next week that has the tides ripping strong and baitfish being tossed and tumbled for eager stripers to suck them up.
My plan was that my long time fishing partner Alfred was to arrive at the boat by 8PM. We would go right out go check out this little bump that is just a short run from the inlet for the outgoing tide. If there were no fish, then we were going to come back to the dock, sleep till 1AM and fish 1AM-6AM for monster stripers on the incoming tide off the light house...
Well that was the plan....and as you know plans are made to changed or broken. We arrived at my little honey hole as guess who was home???
There was all type of bait showing on the screen, I don't know if it was squid, but whatever it was, there was plenty of it. THis is the known recipt for big stripers. This spot has produced my 51.5 pounder, thiry fish over 40-pounds and hundreds of 30-pound stripers in the past three seasons for Cody, Al and myself. We have also lost giant stripers well beyond the 50# mark here.
1st drift, Al gets a shot and nails a 20+ pound bass...good sign, I then get a shot and miss the fish. We run back up on the drift and drop our eels down again, I get the fisrt shot and blow it again, Al gets a shot and blows his fish. Back up on the drift, I shorten the drift to give me just a hundred yards before the piece and the game was on.
Drift after drift we keep getting fish or shots. I realize that we are blowing somany shots because the fish are not instantly inhailing the eels, but playing with them. We discuss the method and start to let the fish eat the eels longer before setting the hook. THis is unusal for Montauk, here we usually just instantly set the hook.
I get a mid 30s on the next drift. THe action slows a little and I decied to keep another couple of spots honest. So we run south and make twenty drifts between three spots with only one hit.
Now honestly, we like incoming much better and outgoing for big fish...that is... except on this little piece we were first working. Now its 1AM and we decied to go back and work the end of the tide on our honey hole then snooze for an hour as the tide changes then finish up the incoming up by the lighthouse.
Alfred says "You know there could be a 50-60 or even 70 pounder sitting on this piece just waiting to eat our eels" I know Al, this place is always great the latter in the tide it gets. We start the drift and I get a big fihs on, I an feel its big with sholders but never got a solid hook in him. We go back up on the drift and this time on the same drift line on Northstar 951, Al says " I am getting a hit, I am letting him eat it" "IAM IN!!!!!" Wow its a big fish!!!
I place my rod in the holder leaving it our for a second cow and get the big net to assist and net Al's nice fish. Even though were in shallow water 24-27' the fish take some monster runs hard against his tight drag. Back and forth, give and take this is a real cow. I finally get to see the silver silloute of the COW and I get totally STOKED! ITS BIG, REAL BIG!
I finally get to scoop it up and I can't just lift the net and fish into the boat...its BIG!! I use two hands and over the rail she comes.
WOW, wat a cow, the head and gut on this fish made me easily think it was mid to high fifties...its big and both Al who has a 60.25# and 50.5# striper with multiple high 40-49 pounders under his belt as well as my 55 and 51.5 and four 49-49.5# stripers under mine....its just plain BIG!
We did some video on my camera (but no IR illuminator) since the only thing missing, was my son, Cody, who immediately got a telephone call as well as my wife at 1:30AM to tell of ongoing success and the big fish on the deck. I took some pictures and video and back we went to work, four more fish into 35# hit the deck. THen we went to the light house at 2AM and started fishing three incoming spots, two to three drifts per spot with not hits, runs, or errors and at 2:30AM we called it a night.
With Fifteen big cows under our belt, it was a great night of typical Montauk striper fishing!
Back at the dock we immediately weighted the big female...the dock scale says it 50 on the button, I can't beleive that its at least 53-55lbs, It just seems very big, but the scale doesnt lie, OK off to bed, at 5:30 AM the dock opens, we get up put her on the digital scale and she tops at 49.60, SHit! so close yet so far, We are real guys who don't fool ourselves and a 50 is a 50 and a 49 is just a forty! Got to be true with yourself first! Well Al's birthday is tomorrow so here was his 51 year birhday bass! Good going Al! and it is the way its been for 31 years we have fished to gether, whenever we get into big fish, he is always rigt next to me. Sorry Cody missed this night, it was a great one for the memory books!
Here are some photos
Al is 6' 5" so when I hold the bass at 6' it looks even bigger!
THe bass were full of fluke, check out this picture
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