Steve826  05/21/2008 - 17:05  Trip Reports  Impoundments  Roll Your Own    Me and my dad hit a local pond after school today for an hour. Dad got the only hit of the day, which was a largemouth that looked like it was in the 12-15 inch range. It hit a 3.5 inch Strike King Bleeding Tube in Pearl Pepper dragged across the bottom. Dad was not able to land the fish, as soon as he felt the strike and set the hook, which he did pretty hard, his line snapped and the fish thrashed away on the top of the water, allowing us enough time to take a quick look. He was using 8 pound test. No other strikes after that. Now, my question is. How hard should we be setting the hook? I read that a bass has a hard jaw and requires a hard hook set. Is this true? Should we be putting a lot of muscle in our hook sets or should it just be a tug? He thinks he lost the fish due to a bad knot because a hard hookset probably wouldnt break 8 pound test. If someone could give me tips on setting the hook correctly, please let me know.

Steve826  05/14/2008 - 16:55  Trip Reports  Monocacy  Roll Your Own    Me and my dad headed to the Monocacy after school today for an hour. Within 5 minutes my dad hooked up with a nice bass on a Berkley Blade Dancer but it threw the hook before he could bring him to shore. No more hits after that. Other than the blade dancer, we fished a white 3 inch grub, a 3.5 inch Strike King Bleeding Tube in white, and a 3.5 inch Yamamoto Tube in Chartreuse w/ Black flake. The current was swift and the water was muddy. We knew the conditions would be tough because of the flood but we wanted to try and get out anyway. Good luck if you get out, and be careful.

Steve

BaconSlayer  05/08/2008 - 10:10  Trip Reports  Roll Your Own   

I was lucky enough to slip out of work early yesterday and catch up with an old friend to do some trophy rockfishing yesterday in the bay. We could not have asked for a better day. The weather was sunny and not a cloud in the sky. We were blessed with one foot waves but to me the water looked like glass. We went out about 1 pm after meeting up with his brother-in-law and a friend of his. After trolling for about an hour or so we ended up landing this very nice trophy size rockfish. It was just shy of 48 inches and just under 40 pounds. When the thing struck it almost felt like we had one of the baits get snagged on the bottom but after it screamed off about 100 yards of line we knew we had something. After about a 20 to 30 minute fight we were able to land the fish and were all shocked when we saw the size of it. Chris, the guys boat we were on, said it is a new personal best for his boat. Although we are all pretty big on conservation, this one ended up making it to dinner plate! All in all we had a great day on the bay and I was able to catch up with some old friends.

Steve826  05/02/2008 - 19:36  Trip Reports  Impoundments  Roll Your Own    After hearing good things about fishing from the piers at Piney Run Reservoir in Sykesville, we decided to go try it today. Its a good 45 minute drive from Frederick so we decided to go in the late afternoon and grill out some food there after fishing awhile, then fish the evening some too. Got there about 4, started fishin soon after. Started out with a weightless tex-posed 5 inch Senko, Watermelon w/ Red Flake. I got my Zebco 33 re-lined w/ 8 lb test the other day at Fox's in Frederick and the reel casted quite a bit farther now that its re-lined. I was throwin that thing far, even with no weight. Didnt get any hits though. Eventually got hung up. Switched over to a tex-rigged 5 inch Zoom Lizard with a 1/8 bullet weight, per Jeff's reccomendation. Chartreuse pepper was the color, they're nice lures for the $2.50 price tag. Also no hits on that. The whole time I had my ultralight rig set up with half a nightcrawler and a bobber trying for some of these monster panfish that Piney Run is supposed to have. Well, you can bet I was perplexed that we got skunked. There were quite a few people fishing from these piers, and only one person caught a fish, a small perch. Really weird. The water was pretty clear, and we saw a few 5 inch sunfish, a ton of minnows, and a couple small perch, but thats all. No visible signs of spawning bass, which is really weird. A gentleman who talked to us for a few minutes said there are some lunker bass around these piers, and they are spawning right now. The water depth within casting distance from the piers is about 5 feet. I was just surprised we didnt catch anything. I dont think we'll go back to Piney Run. While its a nice lake, with plenty of floating piers, its just not worth driving 45 minutes to risk not catching much anything when there are closer places to fish. Oh well, it was nice to get outside cause it was a real nice day out. Y'all seem to be making up for my lack of fish anyway, haha.

Steve826  04/24/2008 - 19:37  Trip Reports  Impoundments  Roll Your Own    Went back to that same pond that me and my dad have fished a few times lately. Same setup, Berkley Power Egg fished off the bottom. A fishermen I was talking to reported that the DNR truck stocked 250 more trout at 9:30 AM today, so the bite was somewhat sluggish. At about 4:00 I hooked up with a trout that fought really good, but as it got right up to the shore and I could see him, my line snapped and I lost him. I was pretty pissed, because I wasnt expecting to get a lot of bites. If only we had a net.... Hoping for another chance, it came about 20 mins later. Hooked up with another trout...and you guessed it, I lost him too. I was pretty mad..I've never lost two fish before in the same day like that. Don't know why I wasnt hooking em good. Oh well, better luck next time.

TightLine  04/18/2008 - 19:38  Trip Reports  Liberty  Roll Your Own    Took off a couple hours from work and got on the lake about 2:30. I started on a wind blown point with a jerk bait and wham! thought I had a whopper smallmouth, but it was a 20 inch striper. It really put up a tussle on my light outfit. I headed back in a rocky cove and got one 15" smallie. I went through a pretty good dry spell, and then right before I was going to call it quits, I got suprised by a chunky 14' largemouth...I got real calm out, I wish the wind would have been blowing a bit, I think I would have done better.

edit: I forgot to mention, the water temps in the main lake 61, the warmest water I found was 63.

Steve826  04/17/2008 - 21:05  Trip Reports  Impoundments  Roll Your Own   

School got let out at 12:20 today because of some teacher's meeting, so of course me and dad wanted to go fish. This time we made it a family outing. My mom and brother came along as well. Mom just sat and looked at a magazine, while the guys fished. Headed to a local pond stocked with trout for the put and take trout season. My algebra teacher had showed me a picture of a 2-3 lb bass he had caught at this pond a couple days ago, and his buddy caught 4 trout there, so we took his advice and headed to his spot at the pond (thanks Mr. Babb!) Set up a couple rods with bait, and threw some lures as well. I was fishin a roostertail in rainbow trout color, my dad and my brother Dan were fishin yellow grubs. No hits after an hour or so, so we just decided to set up all 5 rods we have between the 3 of us with bait. Had Berkley Powerbait Salmon Eggs on 2 rods, Berkley Powerbait Trout Nuggets on 1 rod, and good ole corn on 2 rods. We fished all this bait on the bottom with 2 split shots. After only 15 minutes or so, I look at my ultralight microspin rod and its shaking around. Pick it up, give it a quick hookset. Felt some pullage for a few seconds and then nothing. Reeled in, my bait was still there. Hmm. Cast it back out. Let it sit for about 30 seconds, and WHAM, my rods thrashing around again. Picked it up, set the hook and I got a fish on. Now I know why people who go after trout use 4 pound test. I had 4 lb test on my reel, and it was a lot of fun bringin that fish in. It thrashed around at the surface, and as I worked it toward shore, made a nice run to the other side of the pond. Handled him and brought him to the shore carefully and slowly. He capped off this nice fight with a good jump right at the shore. I landed him and took a look. Final tally: an 11 inch rainbow trout, my first trout ever! I was really excited. Only bad news, I gut hooked him. Its bound to happen when you're using bait instead of lures. Pulled the bait out and tried to get the hook out. It wouldnt budge. We cut the line as close to the fish as possible and took a picture. Not a bad picture, I'm gonna send it to the webmaster in a minute for him to get it up here. Thanked the fish, and thanked God for letting me catch him, and released him. No more fish after that, but I didnt care. I know the fish isnt all that impressive to experienced guys like most of you, but it was a lot of fun, and it was my first trout, and first fish that wasnt a bream, so I'm happy.

By the way, the trout was caught on the Powerbait Salmon Eggs. No hits on the corn or trout nuggets.

Steve

ogbudha  04/17/2008 - 19:53  Trip Tools  Potomac  Roll Your Own    FINALLY GOT MY C CLASS!!!

Worked with Lyall8 today on the river. We got well over a dozen in the boat today. Sizes ranged from 12-20.5 inches. Got a decent largemouth to take a tube 16" and fat. BUT the BIG NEWS was a 20.5 " smallie that was just as fat as could be...it went 5pounds on the boga scale!! It was great to finally break over the 20" barrier. I have 12 fish this year over 18 but none over 20 until today.It was a great day. Pics will be posted by Muskalungee tommorow.

TightLine  04/17/2008 - 14:32  Trip Reports  Liberty  Roll Your Own    I take my dogs for a walk down a logging trail and around the shoreline, weather permitting, just about every afternoon. I've been looking for activity in the shallows, but until yesterday, I hadn't seen a thing move so far this year. Well yesterday, I first saw a large school of minnows, then in the back of a cove that was receivng the afternoon sun, I saw a huge school of carp...I quit counting at 40. On we went around the bank, and then a very large group of some kind of shad or herring (six to eight inches long) came right up to the bank and then took off...so, I think I'm going to take off early tomorrow, and give it a go. I would suppose that the water has got to be getting close to 60 degrees now, and I'm going away for the weekend, so...I'll let you know how I do.

Reel Lunker  04/12/2008 - 08:53  Fishing Reports  Roll Your Own    took advantage of the nice weather yesterday and slipped out of work early. went to chase some trout in a local stream. Caught my first one, a 13-14" rainbow trout, a pretty looking fish. snapped a pic on my phone because I knew my friends wouldn't believe me and let it go. That is only my second time out for trout this year, but it is real relaxing out there in the woods with a spring fed stream as your background noise. plus those fish can put up a good fight on an ultra light rig.