August was a crazy month of traveling and fishing, so here you go…

Shortly after Julia and I’s our ‘babymoon’ salmon trip, my brother Kevin and I were off to the Atlantic City area for an off shore tuna trip with my friends Charlie and Jay.   These areguys I met while working in Alaska that I have been good friends with ever since.  In April, I took them steelhead and walleye fishing in NE Ohio, so the ball was in their court for a trip.  Charlie suggested an 80-100 mile overnight trip to the Jersey Canyons aboard his beautiful 38′ Wellcraft.  Although my August schedule was crazy, there was no way in hell I wasn’t going to work that in…   The fishing wasn’t fast and furious, but we still caught a nice longfin tuna, hooked into and jumped a couple white marlin, brought a 2 mako’s right to the side of the boat, and had a half dozen rips that we never saw the fish.  It was a combination of trolling, and anchoring up and chunking on the edge of the Canyons.  The cool thing about this fishing is you never know what you are going to see and what could hit.

We saw pilot whales all over the place, and although it never happened, there is something cool about knowing that at any moment, a school of 150-300lb Bigeye tuna could rip through your spread and all hell could break loose!   The sunset, sunrise, and stars out there, unreal!   Thanks again Charlie!  We hope to take another crack at it one day, and I look forward to our next fishing adventure, ball is in my court now!

That was August 15-16, the 17th, it was pack up, pick up Greg Yarbourgh, and we were off to Sault Ste Marie for the National Team Championships and Masters Walleye Circuit.  After getting up there around 10am Sunday, a tough week of prefishing commenced before the tournament that started on Thursday the 22nd.   The cool thing about that fishery, the St. Mary’s River, is that it is so versatile in terms of tactics you can use to catch walleyes.   At one point, Greg looked over at me and I was laughing, he questioned “What’s so funny?”   I had just looked around the boat, and counted 23 rods rigged laying around the boat, ridiculous!  But a funny point that shows how much we were trying and what the possibilities are up there.  Welp, day 1 we blew it.  1 fish for 1.03 pounds.   We caught like 20 walleyes that day, but mostly shorts, except the one dink we weighed, and one other that pinched across the line when we caught it, but seemed to shrink when we last minute double checked the legality just before weigh in.  We had to throw it back…  Day 2 we decided to swing for the fence, and go troll spinners on rock piles way down south.  We connected for 19.9lbs for the 7th biggest bag of the day!  Greg and I stumbled upon a rock pile all by ourselves around 12:30, and caught 6 nice fish over the next 2 hours before having to make the 50 mile run back upstream.  What a comeback!  Unfortunately we were .2lbs away from making the cut and All-American team to fish the next day, a little bitter sweet, but still a great comeback that we had a blast with!

After this, I cam back and flew a trip, and then Julia and I were off to Myrtle Beach for Labor day weekend to see her family at the beach.   It was a nice relaxing week, but of course I had to sneak in a little fishing…   Off the surf, we caught about a 1o inch bluefish, and that made it time to get the shark rig ready as I had been skeaming for weeks.   So, I rigged a 12/0 circle hook to 5′ of 94lb wire leader, to a 10′ piece of 100lb flouro, then to my large reel spooled with 50lb braid.   Then I took a 10′ piece of 50lb mono and tied it to a rock and the hook.  The bluefish went on the hook, (as you can see me rigging in this pic), then in the kayak, and I paddled the rock and bait out a couple hundred yards past the surf.  Not 15 minutes after getting back to shore with the kayak, the rod goes screaming.  I set the reel in gear and hammer the shark.   Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!  Gosh I love that sound.  30′ of line out in a sec, and then the 6′ shark goes flying out of the water about 4′ in the air and crashing down like a marlin.  Then snap!  I have slack…  What the ****!  What possible could have broke!   I reel in my rig, and find out the shark bit through my wire leader.   Damn!  That was the only bait I had, and the last night we were there.  But the good news is that our family lives there, and this will be an annual trip.   I can promise next year that I will beef up the gear, and this won’t happen again.   I will be back and ready to battle next year Mr. Sharky…

So back I am here in Ohio, and yesterday had a charter out of Avon Lake.  The original plan was to head out east to Ashtabula, but with 15mph North winds, we decided to stick to Avon Lake, as I had some good insight on fish half mile off shore instead of the 15-20 mile boat ride out east.  We were greated at the boat ramp in the morning with 4-6ers out of the North, so we were happy we didn’t have to make a 15+ mile run.   Although the action wasn’t hot and heavy, we did manage to get a limit.   It was good to see that the big fish have started migrating back as we had a couple big girls!    Reef Runners, in pink lemonde caught the bigger fish, but when we switched over to spinners, we caught more fish, not uncommon for this time of year.   Our target depth seemed to be that 25-40′ of water near the point.   Although my August travels were amazing, it was good to get back out on mother Erie!

Expect a blog to come soon about selling my 2013 Starcraft STX 2050, it will be a sad day when I have to let this beaut go!  Julia is 20 days away from the due date of our first child, exciting times!  Expect a few trips here and there on the water, but the next month or so should be buckling down getting ready for this kid.   The next big hurrah on the water is the MWC Championship on Bay de Noc in October!

Cheers!