New Year's Eve striper trip results in 42lb fish

Hmmm....Now I know and love "fish steaks", so blues work on the grill huh?
Thanks for that advice, I will keep it in mind when we go out and hit them
again soon.

Actually, one of the gawkers on the ramp that evening said something to
the
same affect when we told them that we caught more blues than stripers,
that
they'd make good "grillin' steaks" had we kept some of them. I'll say one
thing for blues, they are absolute hell on soft baits. Whether you catch
them or they just snipe at the baits, they can tear up a lot of plastic in
short order with them teeth...

.....yessir up here in "the bay" you have to get the bait down past the blues
to get to the rocks....the grill helps drain the oil while they
cook.....next time you run into a school of blues, try a big zara
spook.....it's a blast.

"Huck Palmatier" wrote in message
news:BZqvf.5427$CV.3024@dukeread03...

Hmmm....Now I know and love "fish steaks", so blues work on the grill
huh?
Thanks for that advice, I will keep it in mind when we go out and hit
them
again soon.

Actually, one of the gawkers on the ramp that evening said something to
the
same affect when we told them that we caught more blues than stripers,
that
they'd make good "grillin' steaks" had we kept some of them. I'll say
one
thing for blues, they are absolute hell on soft baits. Whether you catch
them or they just snipe at the baits, they can tear up a lot of plastic
in
short order with them teeth...

....yessir up here in "the bay" you have to get the bait down past the
blues
to get to the rocks....the grill helps drain the oil while they
cook.....next time you run into a school of blues, try a big zara
spook.....it's a blast.



Ya know, it's funny you mention that. As we weere making our way back South
to Oregon Inlet to get back to the ramp, from Duck (NC), we came upon some
baitfish, literally being chased to the surface by "something". Of course we
saw it was Bluefish once we eased up on them, and I can just about promise
you we could have thrown a Spook, or even a Devil's Horse stick bait at them
and would have loaded up. As it is, we dropped some bucktails, jigs with
"long" white grubs, and even a Crippl'd Herring jig/spoon, and loaded up
anyway...That was the most "frenzied" feeding frenzy of fish I think I have
ever seen in my lifetime. For about 20 minutes, we could have had a Blue
every single time we dipped a hook in the water...and they weren't little
bitties either. The smallest one we caught in that school had to be at least
10lbs. They were quite fat.

After about 20 minutes, our arms were so tired, we just forced ourselves to
crank on up and continue toward the inlet...I know our limit here on them is
15 per day, but only 5 can have a TL of 24" or greater. Most of these we
were catching were (or appeared to be) 24"+. We didn't keep a single one,
but still. Knowing now that we can grill them and cook out some of that
strong oil, I'll keep one or two next time. I already grill King steaks, so
I imagine these wouldn't be too different to do.

Earlier in the day, when the stripers had been turned on (after-action
reports tell us the only stripers caught that day were between
10:30AM-12PM), we actually got into the Blues then/there too, and had a
double and a triple on the mojo rigs we were pulling. I reeled in the
double, each appeared to be in that 10-12lb range, and it was a chore
lugging those 2 to the surface all at once, along with 3-4 lbs of mojos too
anyway. lol

And FYI for anyone else following this thread, they've posted a photo of the
new NC State Record Marine Striped Bass that was caught down there last
Friday at http://stripers247.com on their message board. The thread is in
their "Striper Room" (or lounge?) and is titled "North Carolina Record
Breakers" or similar. 62 lbs!! That's a whopper.