Fishing Just West of Tropical Storm Cristobal

Captain Earl Williams joined me on the docks on the Hampton River to try a little bottom bouncing along the Hampton Bar. We knew that tropical storm Cristobal was just offshore, and this low might really turn on the Croaker. The Croaker bite was excellent further up the James around the concrete ships, but with the dark clouds looming, we were not going to risk it. This our first trip out since putting on the new canvas and our mascot, Tina Turner Baugh was anxious to do a little fishing. Tina now can catch Croaker off the floor of the boat, and put them in the livewell. Not bad at all. Depending on what the storm did, we were either going to try and catch some bigger fish, or use the smaller ones for bait. What we thought was going to possibly be a great Croaker catch, turned into just a LOT of small fish. They were fun to catch, however as soon as this storm moves on, we will be heading up the James to see where the big ones are at. Todays trip we left out of the Hampton River, fished the HRBT, and all along the Hampton Bar. When we were not running to a fishing spot, we left the engines on idle. All day total we burned about two gallons of gas, and that is running both Suzuki 250 HP four strokes. I think we spent on gas and squid, less than 20 bucks to fish most of the day.

Croaker are plentiful in our area and do taste good fried up. I was glad to see that today's catch also included some Spot. A cooler full of Spot and Croaker will make any frying pan happy.

Next trip--FLOUNDER

JB