Fish for Fish for Fish, Aboard the Vickie Ann

This past weekend I had the pleasure of going on a fishing trip with my friend, Kevin, my son, Austin, and a few others.

The weather was fantastic, the people were great, and the end result was delicious.









Austin and I got up and met the others in Westminster at 4:00 a.m. From there, we followed them to Deale, Maryland, which is on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.





On the way there it was raining, but I was assured that it was a passing shower, which seemed to be passing all the places we had just come from and following us all the way to the Bay. It was raining as we were loading up the boat and pulling out of the marina; however, the sky then cleared up and we had a beautiful, slightly overcast day on the water.






As we headed out, Dougie (the 1st Mate) began preparing the rods that we would be using to catch bait fish. Ultimately, we were headed out for Rock Fish, but we needed live, smaller fish to catch them. The live well, on the boat, was a little sparse, so we headed out to a spot and dropped our lines with worms and some artificial bait.

Soon enough we started catching Croakers and Spot Fish. Both of these fish were relatively small, but only the Spot Fish were kept for Live Lining. Live Lining is when you put live bait on a hook and let it swim around to attracted the larger fish...it's a tough job, but someones got to do it. The Croakers weren't used for this, because of spines on their dorsal fin that the larger fish don't like.

The Croakers didn't get away that easy though. Dougie cut up a bunch of them to use for Chum; throwing chopped or ground fish into the water to attract schools of fish. It got easier to tell the two fish apart, especially since the Croakers croaked...literally...and the Spot Fish had...well...a spot on them.







After we had a bunch of bait fish, we headed further out onto the Bay and finally dropped the larger lines for the Rock Fish.

The captain, Dale, did a great job at finding the fish, because it didn't take long for us to start pulling in sizable Rock Fish. According to the 1st Mate, you're only allowed two Rock Fish, per person on the boat. Soon enough, we had our limit and were on our way to deeper waters and more fishing.





Some of the party pulled in a couple of Perch and others caught a few small Blue Fish. Most of us kept catching more Croakers and Spot Fish. After approximately six hours on the boat, our time was up and we headed back to the marina.

Dale did a wonderful job at getting us back safe and sound, and Dougie did a great job at filleting the fish.

Take a look at some of the other photos from the trip...and then on to dinner.

As I said, Dougie did a great job with filleting the Rock Fish, which made my job much easier. All I had to do was coat the fish and pan fry the fillets.













I simply coated the fish in flour, dipped it in egg, and coated it with a prepared mix from my local grocery store.

I then fried the fillets for a couple of minutes on each side and then let them finish cooking in the oven; delicious.

For those interested in the photos of the fish:
Although it may look as though the shots were taken during the day, with window light,
they were actually taken at 8 p.m., in my kitchen.
I exposed for no ambient light and used a single, bare, 580EXII fired into a
corner behind and to the left (camera right) of the fish.
ISO 200; f/2.2; 1/200 sec.

Enjoy!

If you happen to book a trip on the Vickie Ann, with Captain Dale, make sure to tell 'em you heard about them from me; his number is on the back of his shirt in the first photo.