well let me first of all say this was once again and top notch, well run tournament, from the preparation to the execution it went off without a hitch I think.

I had Steady, Otter as usual on the boat as well as a good friend Jim Menge from Waldorf Maryland and my brother-in-law Ray aka Guam Vodoo to round out the team. We had high hopes and the plan was to drift eels on Saturday and Run way south on Sunday for the troll bite. Ray started having Chest pains on Friday night and as he has Stints we had to get his wife up here and get him to the hospital. The girls told us to go ahead and fish saturday and they would get Ray to Portsmouth Hospital to get checked out for possible heart attack !.......so with that in mind we put on about 20 layers of clothes, various hand and feet warmers and set out from the house in 14 degree weather with Still think'n in tow.

Get to the ramp at 0530 with 4 dozen eels soldiered up and ready to go to war for us. At the ramp the boat were all using one ramp as they were all iced over pretty bad and using one ramp would be safer as you could get another boat in there before the ramp re-iced up. We did take a slight skid as we backed down the ramp but we got the boat off the trailer and back into a thin layer of ice on lake rudee !.....The motors were very cold and it took a few minutes before the water stream started coming back out of the engine !......

We beat it north at about 25 knots into a fairly good N - NW wind and got to our spot at around 0700.....water temp was hovering around 38 degrees and the air temp stayed in the teens until well after noon.....we made a few drifts, changing out the water in the eels so they wouldn't freeze, but alas, on one of our moves the water froze up in about 4 minutes and the eels were a frozen dead pile in the bucket so we were done eeling way before I wanted to be done...plan b.....

We ran north and north and up past ship shoal inlet finding absolutely nothing, dead water man......saw a couple buddies up there but they had zero luck also...called the G&H crew who I knew were fishing well north around Chincoteague but they were not catching at the time either..although they got into a bite of 22 - 24 inch stripers later in the day.....so we turned the boat around and went to old predictable Cape Henry where scattered fish were being caught....we trolled and trolled and pulled one 27 1/2 inch fish out of the scattered marks but that was it for day one....back home, no sense in washing the boat as the temp was still 24 degrees and the water would have frozen immediately....although only 24 degrees, we felt we were in the tropics after getting off the water and onto land.....just insane...

Day 2, much warmer, 34 degrees in the morning and we were excited we would be fishing in such tropical conditions.....forecast called for 5 - 10 knots out of the SW and temps in the 40's...NOT.....we planned to motor south until we saw signs of life and then fish the action moving north the rest of the day...well as we're steaming south, we notice that the winds are more like 18 - 20 Kots or more out of the South with freezing rains and sleet mixed in....made it as far south as Duck research pier without a sign of life...no birds, fish, bait ..nothing so we turned around and headed north finally putting lines in around False Cape in what appeard to be more dead water....as we're dragging baits through lifeless water hearing scattered reports of fish up around Cape Henry we see the armada, literally 50 or more boats hard steaming south again...WTF, we just left there but we saw the charter guys so we pulled up lines and headed south with the parade...well, down around corolla, most of the boats made a hard left and headed out over the horizon, NOT ME.....no way man.....back north again finally finding marks and birds around the fishing pier at Sandbridge.....but it was not meant to be...no fish today, We had one pull that did not come tight and caught about a 2 pound bunker on a MOjo.....

THe tournament name definately held up to it's name as Steady was sure he had Frostbite on his toes on day 1, it just turned out to be cold toes though...

That's it for a few weeks got some things to do so good luck to you hardcore striper fishermen...hope the rest of the season is good.....Bob

Bob, I'm cold and exhausted just from reading your report. I salute you Sir for keeping your fishing real and honest.

It was definitely cold out there Saturday Bob. I went fishing with a buddy on Sat. launching out of Cobbs. Water was froze from the ramp out 60 feet. I didn't think that would happen over there at Rudee for you guys, but I guess I was wrong. We had the same problem with the stream on the engine, had to really let her warm up before it was flowing. When he backed the trailer down the ramp into the water it broke out both his tail lights because the ice was thicker than he thought it would be!!!! Ice all over the boat all day, and it seemed like as soon as the water hit you it turned into ice instantly!! Good Times!! I'm glad everybody stayed safe.

The tournament was 1st class. Friday was the coldest day I have ever fished. We couldn't catch anything. Sunday was much warmer @ 34 degrees. We marked fish and bait both days with only 1 fish (Sunday) to show for it. GIL

I"m sure there are some great stories out there......guys fishing any day this weekend....How about this..


IT was so cold...."

how cold was it

It was so cold, my beer turned to slush as soon as I popped the top !...

...Bob

Bob,
Nothing like fresh eel-sickles!
Missed y'all at the party last night.

nice job it was a cold one!!