Even Great Blue Herons Have an Occasional Bad Day

How do I know? Because I was shadowed by one of these creatures for the better part of two hours this morning as I fished my way to the mouth of West Neck.

When I cut the gas motor at my first hole and started working the shoreline, the heron also stopped and started stalking the area, looking for breakfast. When I moved to the next stretch, as well as the one after that, so did this bird.

The one thing we had in common was that neither one of us was catching anything. By the time I had arrived at the mouth of the creek, it had become abundantly clear that what I had hoped would be my good-luck charm had turned out to be a dud. We both were left scratching different parts of our anatomies, and armed with that realization, I decided to take a boat ride to Albright's and see if I could change my luck.

Less than 15 minutes after I started tossing a Pop R down there, I had a fish on. My first thought was that I had made the right decision. Four hours later, though, I had come to the conclusion that I was wrong. I hadn't had another bite the whole time, so I wrapped things up and headed back to West Neck. Fortunately, I timed the return trip just right and didn't see a single "big boy" en route.

I was busy cleaning up the boat when my friend, Skip, came off the water and stopped by to swap results and chat a spell. Turns out he had had a pretty decent four hours on the water. The bass in this picture is one of three he boated, along with a yellow perch. As you can see here, this fish fell for a Slider worm. The yellow perch went for a crankbait.

Skip also had talked to our mutual friend, Lenny, on the water and learned that he, too, had caught three bass today.

And, finally, I was talking to a fella who stores his boat up close to mine, and he was telling me that he had gotten a couple of nice bass today, along with some bream--all on live bait. The common theme in these three reports was that all the fish came from above the West Neck Bridge.

Guess that blue heron shadowing me psyched me out--that's my story, at least, and I'm sticking to it.

On a different note, I learned today that Steve Winfree had to put ol' Zeus down. Seems he had a stroke or something a couple or so days ago and hadn't been right since. He ultimately became incapable of moving at all. I personally haven't talked to Steve, but Skip did and then told me.