Just back from a long tough trip to the east coast, fishing in Chesapeake bay in Va and along the Jersey Shore. Bad weather and tough fishing were the theme for the trip. Even so I had a great time fishing with some awesome anglers and I added a couple new species to my kayak catch list.
In Chesapeake bay we fished inside the concrete ships at Kiptopeke Park, which is pretty sketchy. It is a great place to hide from the wind but you had chunks of concrete hanging over your head being held in place by a couple pieces of rusty rebar. But it was inside these ships where I caught my first Tautog. A very tough fighter for there size that were real bait stealers and tough to hook.
We also caught a ton of flounder while in VA and put in a lot of paddling miles looking for, but never finding, the bull reds we came here for.
After VA we headed up to New Jersey to fish the tidal rivers and off the beaches. Again weather was our enemy giving us short windows of good condtions followed by wind rain and fog. We saw miles of bait fish but not much feeding on them. We did get into a great blue fish bite which was fun on light tackle cathing fish in front of multi million dollar mansions.
I did finally get my first ever Striped Bass which was very fun and I got to witness a large whale feeding on the schools of bunker which was one of the coolest things I have seen on the water. We did harvest this one Striper because it was hooked in the gill and was bleeding out as you can see on my kayak. But it made for very good Sashimi once back on shore.
Great to be home for a couple weeks. Next Stop Kona