Banner day on the B-Faithful out of Solomons

[B-Faithful]

Full report later but we had over 35 fish today with only two under 28".. Largest went a fat 42". Most were nice in the 36-38" range. We lost about 9 fish too and had 5 on at once at one point. My arms are tired as there were only 4 of us onboard... :shock:

Santa came early!!

8) 8) 8) 8) 8)

 

[Megabyte]

Were you using night crawlers or squid strips?
Details man... details!

 

[B-Faithful]

Rubber Fish of course.. Photos and full report later :wink:

 

[TheOtherLine]

Were you using night crawlers or squid strips?
Details man... details!

The only bait I know of, that allows me to catch that many fish, requires that you pull a pin. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[B-Faithful]

Here is the story. One of the guys who I share reports with locally and have worked with to find fish blew his 3 year old Yamahas. (I will give Yamaha credit as they are stepping up for the repairs) Since the last day we both fished and worked together ended up in a very dismal day, i invited him on the Judge for a little revenge on the fish. A lot of the local fisherman know him as 27 Sailfish or Skip Zink. He has won the MSSA and place high in it quite a few times. I believe he has also been named Maryland capt of the year a couple of times. Well Skip accepted the offer along with two other pretty experienced fisherman on the bay, Paul Buckmaster (Reeltor) and Mark Lagono (aka MLag). From that point, IT WAS ON and on good......

Skip called to ask me how many topside rod holders I had and how many rods I owned. As typically a non planer board puller I said I had 10 rigged poles for trolling but one had a bad guide so I was down to 9. He said, OK I will bring some stuff. Well Skip packed like 6 more rods and his planer boards with 140' of line. He was disappointed to see that I only had 13 topside rod holders -- so a 13 rod spread it was going to be. As we left the ramp at Solomons the sun was coming up and I was anxious to get the rods in the water. We setup just west of the HI marker and trolled east. They were able to get all the planer lines deployed with out a knockdown. As I finished setting a boat rod deep and was getting a second one ready, the boat rod I just set went off... A nice fat fish just under 40" went in the box. The ribbing began because I am not a planer board puller and the boat rods were up on them with one line in the water. Well then it was time for the planer board lines to go nuts and we only caught about 8 fish total on the 3-4 boat rods I had out but caught 30 fish off the planer boards when the day was done. We crushed fish nearly all day with very few long breaks in the action. There was one point I believe we had 4 rods down at once and I had two mid-upper 30" fish on a tandem rig. Fish loved the tandem rigs with double 9's the most. Sea Lice were all over the deck and we had to keep dumping buckets of water on the deck to rinse them out. It was a GREAT day with good friends!

Total fish was 38 boated, 9 or so lost, two under 28", largest was 42" most were mid to upper 30" range--- Revenge was ours! :lol:

Here are a couple of shots Paul took on the day.

 

[Megabyte]

Those are some pretty Rockfish Greg! 8)

 

[B-Faithful]

They are striped bass since they were caught on my boat :lol: (they were all busting on me for not calling them "rockfish" all day too)

Good luck at the CBBT Kev! Catch em up!

 

[Tim A]

Awesome day! So Greg....are you a planer board convert now?

 

[B-Faithful]

Not sure I will pull boards regularly but I will get another set off of Skip (sold my last set to gw204's brother). We had an experienced crew yesterday so it was easy. Being that my crews tend to lack experience (except when I fish with Reeltor who has become a regular partner of mine) it is more of pain to run them. I generally run 9 lines without them and catch fish. However I have never had a day in Maryland like yesterday. Before yesterday Most I have ever had in the Maryland Chesapeake before yesterday was 23 without boards. I certain see that they catch fish and hope to pull them with good crews.

 

[Catfish]

B-Faithful

Unable to see any pictures only the print. Sounds like a good day.

Thanks
Catfish

 

[B-Faithful]

try that...

 

[Parkerman]

Since no question is a dumb question on this board - what is a planer board?

 

[mildew2]

Nice looking stripers. Sounds like you had a great day.Hope you have many more days like that one. That's some serious catchin...

 

[pelagic2530]

Since no question is a dumb question on this board - what is a planer board?

as i understand it, and im sure someone can give a better description than this, they are boards that when trolling are deployed to the sides of the boat, where they are pulled outwards from the boat by the boats movement through the water. release clips are then run out the lines and lines can be attached to increase the boat's spread. sorta like outriggers, but can have a wider spread. however, theyre harder to use in heavy seas like the kinds encountered while offshore fishing. hence, outriggers for me. but different strokes, i guess.

 

[B-Faithful]

pelagic is right. Planer boards are used to pull the lines away from the boat and get your baits swimming in clean water. If you look over the shoulder of the guy in picture "s4" you will see an orange line to orange boards in the water. That is the planer board and the cord used to run our fishing lines out. Key is to mount the line as high as possible so the clips run down the cord with our fishing line. We were letting ling out 40-50' then we would attach to a clip (we were using rubber bands) and let the clip slide out the planer line the desired distance from the boat then we would engage the reel so it wouldnt slide further down the planer line. When a fish strikes it pulls from the clip (or breaks the rubber band) and you can fight the fish with the rod.

Planer boards are different than outriggers in the sense that you can run a lot more lines off them (we had our boards out 140') and they pull baits from a point close to the water. The huge disadvantage for offshore use it that they will flip in big seas and the faster you go the more tension there is on the boat/boards and cord. We typically troll around 3 knots. The boards we pull on the bay would work in the ocean even in some seas as the boards are very big and pull hard in order to combat the chop on the bay and pull a lot of big baits. (we were mostly pulling tandem 9" swim baits on big parachutes off of them )

These are the same size boards we were pulling

 

[susqking]

Sounds like a great day, doesn't get any better that ! I love hearing the fishing line pop off the release clip.

Anthony

 

[B-Faithful]

9 days left in the season Anthony before they shut us down... You gotta get out. Best fall in recent memory!

 

[susqking]

Greg,
I got out twice and we only caught two fish one day and three another day, but this was around the Bay Bridge on my brothers boat.

It's tough getting out around the holidays plus both my daughters are on swim teams and have meets on Saturdays this time of year.

 

[WCS]

Greg, dumb question -- what do you mount the planer board line to on the boat?

wayne

 

[B-Faithful]

Not a dumb question at all. I attach them to the hand rails on the hardtop of my boat. It elevates the line enough so that the planer clip slides down the cord easily. To protect the hand rail I used nylon line around the rail then clipped the planer line to the nylon line. Worked great.

Good info written by one of my neighbors on planerboards here:
http://www.downtimecharters.com/Ideas/P ... boards.pdf