Father's Day Weekend Day 1

The weekend started off well.  The Pirates of Lynnhaven were having a charity tourney targeting Redfish.  Unfortunately the Redfish did not receive the invitation.  However it turned into a great weekend after all.  I was with a group on Friday fishing out of Lynnhaven Inlet.  This was the second time this year fishing Lynnhaven and I still love the inlet.  I am not too fond of the boat traffic there, but I still love the inlet.

We launched out in search of some bait fish and were able to score a few mullet and some killifish.  We decided to head out in search of the target fish.  After getting skunked for the entire morning, we set up on an oyster bar right off the main channel and took out our ultra lite gear to take a break and catch trash fish.  And trash fish was bountiful.  I ended up catching more croaker and grunts than I could care to count.

After that I wanted to cruise over to a flat that I had much success with in the past and from the satellite photos on Google Earth, still looked to have the characteristics that I was interested in for Red's.  The fish were nonexistent but I did have some fun taking photos of the crew.  

Jim was more than happy to model his glowing green Malibu.

Dean was taking the minimalistic approach in a WS Commander.

I was loaded down with WAY too much gear on this trip in my WS Ride135.

Dave had disappeared and we found out later that he tried another flat with no success then headed in.  Jarred had just met up with us and we will have more on him later.

We headed over to the main channel and began drifting for flounder.  We each got a flounder or two.  At this time a boater in what looked like a massive old and dirty Yacht.  It was probably a good 30-35' ugly boat.  They seemed to take aim at our group.  Now typically we keep a calm and cool demeanor, but this was geting ugly fast.  Jim began yelling at them using words that perfectly matched his New York accent.  They got within feet of us at what seemed like near full throttle (it wasn't in reality, but it sure was enough to throw up a nice 2 foot+ wake in the no wake zone were were in).  Anyway shortly after this we drifted the channel by the Oyster Reef and I make one pass with no luck, but right behind me was Jarred and he scored a nice 18" flatty that he took home for dinner.  

The day was coming to a close so we paddled in and packed up for the day.  We did run into Chuck at the launch who reported that he had taken his son out and his son caught his first fish from a kayak that day.  It is great hearing stories like that, especially on Fathers Day Weekend.