The Outdoor Line Forum

I had the opportunity to fish on my friend Chris's boat for the Derby along with his buddy Ray. We made it out of the Everett Marina around 5:30 am on Saturday and headed down toward MA-9 with the idea of working hootchies over on the west side of Possession. We never quite made it to area 9. After a very short discussion during the run down, we all agreed to make a quick stop in the Shipwreck area for some prospecting. We dropped the gear in at 6:30am. heading south along the shore. We ran an ace hi-fly on one rod, pink hootchie on the other and a herring out the back. After a minute or two into the troll we began to notice a large concentration of fish a bit deeper than we were fishing, (we began at 30 to 40') so we dropped the gear down to 75' and 80' holding our GPS speed at 3.0mph. Another minute goes by and... FISH-ON! We ended up limiting the boat out in an hour and a half! Equal fish were taken on both the fly and the hootchie. The key to our success was getting back up above the drift and hitting the same line every time. At one point we had a double... The bite was so hot that we got a fish in the box for every pass. We could have started doing throw backs to work toward a bigger fish but it was just too fun getting our limits that quick. The wind kept me in bed for Sunday. In the end, Ray had the biggest fish from our boat weighing in at 9.5lbs. I think he placed around 130th. but as a bonus, I ended up winning the beer garden raffle and took home $250! This was only my second derby but definitely not my last. Congratulations to all the winners! G

That's a good morning! Nice work hitting the same line.