I've Said It Many Times: You Never Know What You'll See at West Neck

Look carefully near the top of this photo at right, in among all the clouds, and you'll see what was one of probably about a dozen paratroopers who evidently had a training jump from a helicopter flying over the area this morning. Unfortunately, I only had my snapshot camera with me in the boat and couldn't get a better picture. All the other personnel had disappeared by the time I could get to my camera and snap this photo.

I asked my friend, Charlie (who also fished West Neck today), if he had seen the event--hoping that he maybe had gotten a better shot--but that wasn't the case. He never saw any of the parachutes that momentarily dotted the sky at all this morning. It was a pretty sight, even with the heavy overcast conditions.

These conditions persisted off and on throughout much of the day, but I really wasn't too worried about getting wet, because I had checked the weather radar online before leaving the house this morning. The area behind that line of showers that moved through about 7 a.m. looked OK, so I decided to take my chances. In the final analysis, that was a good decision. Charlie and I only saw two very brief periods of spitting rain for the whole day, and neither one got the carpeting wet in my boat.

That being said, it turned out to be another OK sort of fishing day. This 1-4 bass proved to be my best fish of the day. I also caught a 1-0, a 0-13, and one that would have measured about 10 inches. Like yesterday, everything fell for a firetiger Bomber Square A, and all the fish came from West Neck Creek. But whereas I caught all the fish between 1 and 2:30 yesterday, I boated all of them today between 9 o'clock and noon. For the complete story on Charlie's day and the 9 bass he boated, check out his blog at http://vbfishguide.blogspot.com/.

Today's bites were more of that "mushy" stuff I dealt with yesterday, and one of those bites turned out not to be a bite at all. While fishing the mouth of a cove, I snagged what I thought was my best fish of the day, but it really was just another angler's fishing line that was snagged on the bottom. Eventually, the snagged line broke off, so I wrapped it all up and tossed it in the trash this afternoon when I got back to the ramp.

Today's trip likely will be my last until sometime next week, because I have some things to do around the house tomorrow, and rain then is supposed to move in over the weekend. Until next time, Tight Lines!