[globko]

we have been fishing hard for the past 2 days and the report is as follows.

8/7:
we trolled for bluefish for bait around cape henry. we managed to pick up a bunch of snapper blues in the 10-15" range for bait and got 1 spanish at 19" just south of the green can off of ft. story in our short time trolling. we then headed south to dam neck and then to sandbridge (just north of the pier by about 1 mile offshore of the new condos) for kings and cobia. we couldn't get the kings or the cobia to cooperate and had no success with either. none of the boats in the area seemed to be doing much according to the radio chatter. we did, however, pick up a mess of sharks in the 4'-5' range (mostly blacktips and sandbars). we headed back in and picked up a few more bluefish on the troll around ft. story.

8/8:
after catching a bunch of peanut bunker and mullet for flounder bait, we trolled again for spanish and bluefish and picked up at least 50 blues around ft. story. we then headed to the cape henry wreck (chilore) for flounder. the current (and wind) were making it exceedingly difficult to get a decent drift, but we did manage 1 16.5" flounder. we headed to the curve just south of the 3rd island and drifted the CBBT with more success but no keepers (11 flounder to 18.5"). we did spot 2 cobia cruising and hooked into and lost one with a live bluefish. we then headed to the 4th for spades on the ocean side. after no success, we headed north of the 4th to structure for flounder and found large schools of spades (guessing 20-60 fish, mostly small) with bluefish mixed in behind every concrete bridge pilon. we landed 2 spades and 2 blues and lost about 12 more spades. we went back to fishing flounder and picked up another 14 shorts to 18" on various drifts. we did see 3 more cobia on the cruise but could not manage a cast before they vanished.

all in all, a pretty decent 2 days on the water with more to come tomorrow. hopefully some keeper flounder / cobia can be found.

[walter w]

thanx for the report, fished for flounder for the first time last week and forgot how big a keeper flounder really is.