drumking, Riverpark, Rockfish and spotted bass, 5/5/2011, Labman

[FishNews]

Norman (Labman) invited me to accompany him this AM to the Riverpark where we would take up a piscatorial hunt. We fished for 2 hours above the RR trestle bridge. Stayed up there until 1 hardnosed Rockfish decided to take us downstream and after a spirited battle, finally cried "uncle" and came to the net. It was a healthy 15.45 lb striped bass. Norman broke the ice this morning on the first drift and landed a nice Rockfish that was in the 8 lb ballpark if not a little bigger. <br /><br />Then I got in on the act with a couple that came to net and of course we both lost fish after short runs. I set the hook on one fish and it made my reel scream as it peeled off line faster than you could wind it on, and pulled off after a less than 30 second fight. I would like to have seen that fish. Norman had one of for a short time and thought that it had broken his line, but upon further inspection, he learned that the knot had slipped out of the eye. emoBang emoBang Altogether, we had 8 bites, landed 3 rockfish, had 3 pull off after hook up and missed two bites.<br /><br />Then we decided to go bother MrWiskers pets down at the bend. As we approached the area, we noticed that two boats were already working the shoreline and I thought, thrice fished waters can't be too good, but we managed to catch 44 spotted bass, 2 largemouth and 1 smallmouth. All on 1/16 oz jigheads with various plastics and colors. They hit anything. The state or county has been busy as beavers and felled all of the timber that was on the rip-rap banks and just about messed up that shoreline. Many prime holes couldn't been reached by jigs as all that wood was laying in the water. Bummer! That caused several jigs to be donated for the cause. We ran out of our hot lures and I ran out of time (Mom hair appointment) so we called it a great day at 1:20 PM. I didn't take very many pics. Too busy catching fish. We caught bigger spots than the ones that are pictured. emoBig emoGeezer