Spring Fishing 2014

Memories of Spring 2014 Fishing onboard the Down Time


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www.Downtimecharters.com

2013 Spring Trophy Striped Bass

Reuse those sassy shads

  Reuse your sassy shads

After a season of shads being cut up, I wanted to figure out something to do with these shads. The lead and hook can easily be reused for one the best jig heads. 

I always keep these shads that had tails cut off or the nose was busted up from bottom bouncing.

Here is a easy way to use these left over jig heads.

Step 1: strip off all the old rubber shad from the hook and weight. Try to just wipe down to remove as much of the old coatings and rubber shad.

 Step 2: strip and clean up the naked lead heads. I use my outside grill to heat and also cleanup the old shad heads. Using the flame on the grill burns off  any old residue left on the lead and hook. Do not use your kitchen or any cooking oven.

Step 3: The coated lead head can now be cleaned  and prepped for powder coating.

Pro-tec powder coating the exposed lead is the best coloring solution. You can powder coat your lead heads with any color such as white or chartreuse.

Step 4: Now match the coated lead head with a new shad tail, BKD or any of your favorite rubber tail.

Gulp and the other scented baits, shad, mullet, shrimp work great.

Chesapeake bay fishing report 7/31/2012

Lots of nice stripers continue to feed on the flood tide. Trolled up an early morning limit with rock up to 26"'s  for the Keller family.

Cow nosed rays continue to prowl the area, with one big ray hooked.

 

Finished out the morning with a limit of Rock, loads of big Perch and lots of smiles.

For more information visit www.DownTimeCharters.com

Chesapeake Bay Fishing Report 7/30/2012 Stripers and Rays

Today I had a visting family from Wisconsin. With a good looking day, low winds and cloudy, we started trolling off the Magothy with the start of a strong ebb tide.
Hooked up after a about 5 minutes on a nice 23" rock that  we put in the box.

13 year old Tyler,  is an avid fisherman and had never caught any big fish, so he was really excited to bringing in the first 23" Rock.

 Started talking about the bigger fish like Cow Nosed Rays and Drum being caught in the area. Tyler was really hoping to get into a big ray, now that he knew how to handle the trolling rods. We worked our way into Podicory Point shallows. One pass and we  hooked into a big ray that started striping line. Tyler jumped to the rod and held on. This Ray seemed exceptionally big, so we cleared all the rods and tried to chase it down for a  good photo opportunity.Almost got to it when the line went slack. Great fun for about 10 minutes. Tyler is now really excited about catching a really big fish.

Trolled up several more Rock in the 22" - 25" class.
Birds were working on breaking rock on the shorelines in 3' to 5', and since we had the lines in the boat, we went to jigging on the working birds and smaller rocks. The first cast at breaking fish produced a feisty 15" rock. Tyler kept talking about catching a really big fish.

Bam! Tyler hooks up something big.. A very large ray gulped the small bucktail and the fight was on. This was a big ray about 40+ lbs and it ran to the boat for a quick release and some great photos. That was easy.
We worked the breaking fish for another hour, while some small rock feed on small shiners in the shallows.

Bam! Tyler hooks into another bigger ray. This one decides it's going for deep water. Tyler holds on and does a fantastic job of tiring the 50 lb ray. We chased this one down and brought it up the boat for some photos.

Finished the morning with some great memories and some good tasting fillets for the grill.

For more information visit www.DownTimeCharters.com