Finally!!

Mike Earley was instrumental in getting us out on Mother's Day to fish. Somehow he persuaded Suzanne to take the other wives out to an extended lunch/dessert on Saturday. This gave us 4 hours of fishing on Mother's Day morning.

It was windy and a bit cold, but doable. We decided to head to the West End of the Cape Cod Canal and then work our way back. On the way to the Canal we came up on a huge flock of birds that were diving. It was clear by some of the rises that there were fish breaking under the birds. I feel pretty confident that I did not get too close to spook the school, but as soon as i got us within casting distance the birds took off and so did the fish. We slowly went over where the action had been occurring and I noticed that there were some interesting marks on the fishfinder. I have not yet taken the time to completely figure out how it works. I was pretty sure that this had to be fish. Mike and I took some casts and Mike hooked up to the first fish of the season, a small 20 incher. We turned around and repeated the drift. As soon as I told Mike we were over the fish he hooked up again. I was very excited to be reading the fishfinder accurately. We repeated the drift a few more times and I finally got a hit, but it felt like areally small fish and he never really latched on. Mike got a couple more hits too, but we were unable to boat any more fish.

We went up to the West End of the Canal and did see some bird action, but there were no fish under them. On the way back home we swung into the mouth of Red Brook Harbor and made a few casts into the rocks at Wing's Neck. After a while we saw a few striped bass working on some bait in tight to shore. About ten feet away from where we could reach with a cast. Could not tell what the bait was. Looked too small to be herring. Bigger than peanut bunker and smaller than adult menhaden.

I am going to be trying to take advantage of any free time I can muster in the next month as the fishing is really going to start heating up. A couple sick days may be in order as well.