Those who got scared off by the chance of thunderstorms Saturday missed a great day on the bay. One of the nicest days all year. Picked up our limit of schoolie stripers off the rocks of islands 1 and 2. The lure of the day was a windcheater with a dark blue back. Caught all four on that one. They were hanging right off the rocks and picked up most of them about 10' out. Brought one in with a school following it. Picked up some blues as well. My partner tried soft plastics and lost the tail on the first cast.

Then we headed out around the Cape Henry wreck to see if there were some flounder around. We trolled for a couple hours and picked up a shark, mullet, and several nice croaker, but not a flounder to be seen.

Off to the north country for a week and will be back in November. Put out the big striper calls so they'll be here when I get back.

It was a beautiful day yesterday. Great job on those stripers!! I hope those big boys will be here soon...it won't be long!!! Have a safe trip.

--Don

Forgot to add, we got one striper with sores. Found a small crustation attached to him. About an inch long and flat and oval. Might just be the source of the problem. Anyone know what this is?

Did it look like a little shrimp with no feelers?? If so that is sea lice and does not hurt the fish. That is supposed to be a sign that they are ocean fish because sea lice can't live in the more fresh water where the stripers spawn. I've heard a lot of reports of guys catching stripers with sores. I hope they are just sores from bedding in the rocks and not the ones from a bacteria.

That is an isopod. Common fish parasite however they are not the source of the lesions. These isopods are relatively harmless to stripers. The lesions are often caused by or result in bacteria infection (mycobacteria) so careful handling those fish because if you have any cuts on your hands you can easily get an infection. I have started using a glove to handle most stripers.

Nice day on the water Wish I could of been there but the wife had off and I couldn't talk her into fishing.

What's the name of that bacteria?? I'd like to find some pics of it because some of the fish might be hurt from rubbing against the rocks, but I dodn't want to take any chances.

Did a little searching and found this site:

http://www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries/oxford/stripedbass/

That's definitely not what was on the fish I caught. The sores on thid fish were individual round sores about a half inch in diameter. There were 2-3 on each side. They did not appear to be open wounds but were a little darker in the center. There was a lot of talk about the lack of menhadden creating a poor diet and skinny fish with sores. This fish was definitely healthy, good and fat.

They say that the bacteria cant withstand cooking. If you eat it it wont hurt you just dont eat lots of the fish with sores.

At the MMBT the other day there was tons of bait, it was so thick that some friends were casting bucktails and they could feel them hitting the bait on the way down. One of the stripers that we kept had about a six inch menhaden in it. I dont think that it is as bad as they say it is.

There have been only a couple stripers that we have caught with the sores on them there, most of them have all been nice healthy fish.