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It was New Year’s
Eve and the pressure was on. I had made a commitment to provide
a giant rockfish for Valerie Robertson’s New Year’s
party. Fishing for the “cows” had really slowed to a
halt in the Rappahannock but there were reports of scattered stripers
in the Bay.
Fishing below the Virginia/
Maryland line was nothing like it was in 2008 at this time. The
monster stripers had been slow to come down from Maryland. It
was a full moon and we were experiencing a sudden cold snap!
Rick Lockhart and Len
Spiers had volunteered to help move the BOB-A-LONG back to Dividing
creek from Urbanna. (Limits of the big stripers had been wonderful
before the cold snap hit.) We powered down the Rappahannock checking
for bait balls as we proceeded towards the deep water north of
59A and up towards the Leroy buoy.
Not much was showing
but since we only needed one fish I put the spread out anyway.
A desperate call to Gene Pittman looking for some indication of
a fish or two was not good. We continued to work our way North
up to 62- still no signs of life and no positive reports.
It was getting late
in the day and I was concerned about the water level in the creek
because of the fast falling tide. It was time to head for the
barn. What was I going to tell Val?
And then as we were
heading towards the Asphalt Pile and in deep discussion about
the playoffs the port stern umbrella rod started bouncing hard.
Len jumped up and proceeded to bring in a fat over. I had added
two more 6- arm umbrellas double- hung with 8 ounce Captain America
packmans with spinners to the spread to make a total of four heavy
umbrellas.
Rick immediately made
a turn to get back to the fish and in no time we had another and
then another and another! The ‘brellas were working! Rick
had found a pile of fat stripers at the eleventh hour. We had
pulled the ole rabbit out of the hat!
It was getting late
and a call to Connie Martin indicated that we would have trouble
getting into the cove. Proceeding up Dividing Creek we knew we
could not make it all the way so we pulled into Rob Adams’,
cleaned the fish, and headed for Val’s with barely enough
time for her to prepare the rockfish before 2009 ended.
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