On board today, I had repeat clients Jim Kearney and son Zach, and Zach’s friend Austin, for live bait, chunk, and light tackle striped bass.

At first light it was flat calm and we made the run offshore to jig up fresh mackeral. After catching all we needed, we ran back inside to live-line. We got hits on our first six or eight drifts, including a nice run on a keeper landed by Austin.

Next up, we started trolling live macks around the bay for maybe two miles. We only had one hit. As I was telling the crew to reel up, a bass broke topwater chasing some minnows about seventy yards away. We switched up to light tackle poppers and immedidately hooked up. The low tide began to turn and those fish eventually moved on.

As we headed to our next spot, I saw a ton of birds in a tiny, little guzzle and I could see fish breaking. The bass had the bait pinned against the low tide flats. We raised the engine up and followed little cuts and guzzles in less than a foot of water, but we finally got to those fish!!! Lots of action until the flats flooded and the bait could escape and the bass moved out.

As we were retracing our steps to get back to deep water in the channel, fresh fish started pouring into the bay over the flooding flats. Lots of topwater action in maybe a foot of water! It was amazingly shallow, and we saw fish zoom by the boat, up to 36″ inches! We fished topwater poppers for the next hour and boated a ton of bass, including a nice keeper landed by Jim.

Total catch and release today was 35 fish, including two keepers. I will take that all day for the last day of July!

Tight lines & stay posted:

Capt. Dave
BAYMEN
www.baymenlife.com