Van Damme, Sunday 10/29

Made it up to Van Damme for a mid day trip.  Conditions were not great, but fishable with about a 5 to 6 foot lump and uphill current moving about 1 knot.  Fished the normal outside spots for just a few small greenling and blues.  Strange that I was not meetering the normal fish out in the 60 to 120 foot hard spots.  Hooked a few very small shaker lings, couldn't even get a hitch hicker to jump on a small black that I hooked.

Moved south to fish the outside edges of the kelps outside the big exposed reef and same story, the only concentrations of fish I found were suspended schools of blues.  Conditions began to deteriorate and I had a few fat blues in my sack but really wanted some ling for dinner.  I headed inside the reef to fish the calm(er) side of the rocks and switched over to a 4 inch swimbait and a half ounce head, pitching it up to the rocks on a nice light bass rod.  That proved to be the hot ticked as i was bit on every cast almost for the next 45 minutes or so.  Picked up an assortment of black and yellows, small cabs, and managed a nice fat ling in about 15 feet of water.  The belly was huge on the ling and I was going to let it go, thinking it was a small female about to lay some eggs, but then i noticed the tail sticking out of the gullet.  Turns out, it had about a 1 pound black in it's belly, recently eaten and still found it necessary to eat my little swimbait....voracious comes to mind!

Not as good as I usually find it up there, but still a good day on the water.

I also had to add a picture of the pond my son and I fish outside of Windsor all the time.  We went there recently and caught 18 bass in about 2 hours drop shotting.  Most of them are 10 to 14 inches, but the occasionall 3 pounder shows up.  We took our little 8' dingy out so we could get Mom to go, she played photographer for us.

Nice!  Way to score on the shallow-water ling.