Gone Fishin' Striper Charter

The alarm on my cell phone went off at the ungodly time of 2:30AM.  Normally I would throw that thing against the wall and roll over, but today was different.  I was heading to Rock Hall, MD for a striper charter.  We were going on board the vessel Gone Fishin' for a seven hour trip: leave the dock at 5AM and return at noon.  Capt. Mark who runs Gone Fishin' had another work obligation so he sent Capt. Jamie to run the boat for us instead.  Assisting Capt. Jamie was the First Mate for the day Capt. Noah.  First impression of the boat, damn, what a nice boat.  The thing was spotless and in super condition.  This was one of the cleanest boats I have ever seen.

We headed out of the marina and into the bay and Capt. Jamie and Capt. Noah got to work setting up the planer boards and started to put the rods out into the spread.  They didn't even have all the rods out when we had out first hit and the line popped out of the clip.  First angler up to battle the fish was Andrew who had organized the trip for us.  The spread wasn't even all the way out and we had our first keeper in the box.  This was shaping up to be an epic day.

After landing that fish, the rest of the rods were put out and we were on our way trolling through the bay.  Not long after, another line popped and the battle was on.  After getting the reel straightened out and a battle of about 300 yards of line, another keeper was in the box.  Epic day still going.

I was next up and waiting patiently for the line to pop.  It did and the fight was on.  Although this wasn't much of a fight and didn't feel like other stripers I had caught before.  And for good reason.  Here is my catch of the day.

How exactly I caught a bunker when we were using bunker patterned swim shads about the size of this guy, I will never know.  And he was hooked in the mouth, not snagged.

The morning continued much like the beginning with the rods going off pretty quickly one after the other.  By 830 we had 6 slot fish in the cooler and things were looking good.  Until the tide changed.  The wind and the tide were going against each other and gave a pretty good chop to the water.  This put the fish and the bait down deep and we were unable to reach them.  This condition continued for the remainder of the trip.

The Gone Fishin' crew worked hard though and added extra lines out to try to target the deeper fish.  It just wasn't meant to be.  When we arrived at the dock, Capt. Noah cleaned our catch for us.  Most of the fish were fileted, and very cleanly done.

This was a great trip with a super crew on an unbelievable boat.  I will definitely be hitting these guys up again in the future and would recommend anyone looking for a charter trip to give these guys a chance.  They know what they are doing.