In the past week, I saw lots of fish from shore and loads of them from the kayak. However, few were hitting. So, I decided to mix things up a bit and fish from the boat. It turned out to be more of the same old story for me.
My brother Steve and I fished the upper Bay yesterday. There was nothing going on until right before dark. We fished along a shallow, calm, shoreline and found loads of fish. But, they were acting weird. Some were swirling right below the surface, others were finning on the surface as evidenced by their wakes, and still others were just sitting there spooked away when the boat neared them. There were hundreds of stripers in a small area. Few, however, were hitting. My brother managed to land two decent 32 inch fish on swimmers. He had a couple of more on. I had one large fished hooked on a Hogy and lost it. We tried surface lures, skinny plastic, jigs and even whole and chunked pogies. The fish were around in big numbers but most had lockjaw.
One other observation....there were very few boats fishing on a beautiful Sunday afternoon/evening. That's a big indicator that few fish are being caught. Way too slow in the upper Bay for this time of year!
