www.roanoke.com

I hoped to get back into this by posting a shot of me with a nice stringer of triggerfish I caught during our Outer Banks vacation, which just ended yesterday. However, that picture is on my little Canon PowerShot G9 camera, which I can't find.

I'm hoping the camera turns up but I have scoured my bags and my truck and I'm pretty doubtful. I guess it might have ended up on the floorboard in its little soft case and then kicked out at some point either Saturday or Sunday. Foolishly, I didn't have it labled, so if that happened it's gone forever. Fortunately, we didn't have too many shots on it because I mostly used another camera.

The fish picture wasn't special. Just me holding up a stringer with six 2-pound triggerfish on it.

A day earlier I had gone for a swim from the beach near the cottage north to the pier at the Army Corps of Engineers research facility at Duck. The pier isn't open to the public (except for guided tours) but you can walk under it on the beach, and fish and swim around the thing. Not many people do because there is no beach access for maybe 500 yards on either side of it so people just don't go there to set up there beach camps.

As I was getting out of the water I saw a guy in snorkle gear with a speargun. I started talking with him (Brett from New Jersey) and he said he was getting ready to go out after triggerfish and spadefish. I asked if I could tag along.

We swam maybe 100 yards out and set up his dive flag, then went toward their pier. Within a few seconds he had a 2-pound triggerfish on his spear.

He had a stringer on his dive float, but getting the fish on it wasn't simple. Triggerfish have just a tiny gill opening and there's no way to thread a stringer hook through it. So he had to cut a hole in the bottom on the jaw and pop the stringer hook through that. I was helping him when I got careless and got my thumb near the fish's mouth.

Has anyone seen the teeth on a triggerfish? Think horse teeth -- but sharp. The fish got me good. Had it been a little closer to the end of my thumb, it probably would have nipped the whole end off. As it was, it was a couple of deep gouges.

Brett ended up getting four triggerfish on that first run before he headed in to put them in a cooler. I headed back down the beach with grand ambitions to get an inexpensive pole spear at a local dive shop and come back the next day.

By the next morning I'd come to my senses (in part because the nearest dive shop was 20 miles south) and decided that it would probably be better for me to just fish there. So I rented an Ocean Kayak Scrambler, bought a container of shrimp for bait and got ready.

About 10 a.m. I paddled the mile north to the pier, put a shrimp on the hook and dropped it next to a piling about 150 yards off the beach. Instant hit. But no fish.

Triggerfish are also notorious bait stealers and hooking them can be tricky. Eventually I hooked one and it put up an awesome fight. They are platter shaped, like sunfish or spadefish, and they use it to their advantage. I've caught only a couple of spadefish, but I think triggers fight every bit as hard.

But the time I dealt with the fish (it's pretty interesting to have a snapping triggerfish in a kayak with you) I had drifted 100 yards farther north. I paddled back and repeated the process.

The short of it is I got a hit every time the bait went down. I caught probably 10 fish, and kept a half-dozen. I ran out of real shrimp pretty quickly but I found that Berkley Gulp shrimp was just as effective and much more durable.

While the action was fast at the pilings, huge pods of bait were all around me in the open water, and schools of bluefish were blitzing them from time to time. Eventually I tied on a spoon and fooled with them for a bit, but the blues were just little so I went back to the pilings.

I repeated the trip the next day with similar results. Paddling back south against a stiff breeze that afternoon was a real chore so I wasn't too eager to go again. As it turned out, with the swell from Hurricane Bill picking up daily, that was pretty much the end of the ocean fishing window anyway. 

Then it was time to catch some waves. But that's another story...

Here's a shot of Vinton angler Travis Patsell with a great sheepshead he caught during a recent trip to the Outer Banks. Travis is an absolute fishing nut, and he thinks the OBX are paradise for that. In many ways, they are.

We're headed that way in the morning.

About a month ago an opportunity to rent a house for a week for a really good rate fell in our lap and we jumped at it. We'll be in Duck, toward the northern end of the Outer Banks. We may take a trip one day down to a fishing hot spot such as Oregon Inlet (where I understand some of the beach driving restrictions have been eased). But it wouldn't surprise me if the extent of my fishing is just working the surf around Duck for spot, whiting, croaker, little bluefish and the sort.

I may take my laptop down there but I don't know how often I'll be able to access my e-mail or the Internet. In fact, I don't really want to. Isn't vacation supposed to be about getting away from that kind of stuff?

Anyway, this could be my last blog entry until Aug. 23 or 24. Until then, tight lines and keep shooting those bows.

My good buddy Christian Berg, who is the editor of Petersen's Bowhunting magazine, sent me this shot that he got from his bowhunting pal, Bob Danenhower Sr. (right).

Danenhower, who lives in Orefield, Pa., had an awesome day of bowfishing for rays around Chincoteague with his son Brent. Over three days of hunting with guide Randy Birch they saw more than 50 rays, and got nine of them into the boat. This one hanging is 120 pounds.

I talked to Danenhower and he said the meat from these things is really tasty. I've heard that before but have never tried it.

These guys are using rigs similar to the one I use for bowfishing, except my recurve is newer (and less valuable). Brent's bow is a Bear Super Kodiak Magnum and Bob's is an old, metal riser Black Widow. I told Danenhower I thought he was crazy to use vintage bows for bowfishing, which is really hard on gear. But Danenhower, who said he has about 300 bows in his collection, said he'd rather be using them than just letting them sit and collect dust.

My wife has been pushing a Disney World trip for a couple of years, wanting to do it while the kids are still at a "good age." Well, we finally did it, yanking them from school for a week and heading down in mid-May when the crowds are lighter than normal the weather is usually great.

Ah, the weather...

Many parts of Florida had been experiencing a terrible drought in early 2009. The end of the drought pretty much coincided with our visit.

It started raining the second evening we were there, and it never stopped. I think Orlando got something like 14 inches. It could have been worse. One area near Daytona Beach had over 24 inches of rain over a span of a few days.

In rain ponchos from Wal-Mart, we braved the deluge at the parks each day. It was wet, but at least it wasn't cold. And the amazing lack of lines -- you could stay on many rides if you wanted -- was great. In fact, given the choice of rain or long lines, I'll take rain every time.

We also swam in the rain. A lot. Only lightning kept us out of the great pool where we were staying.

I slipped over to the gulf coast for a day of wade fishing around normally sunny St. Pete, which averages sunshine 361 days a year. There was no sunshine on that day. But, despite the horrible weather -- rain, wind and occasional lightning -- we caught some fish, including this pretty spotted sea trout.

A side trip to St. Pete is a great getaway for an angler whose family is at the Orlando resorts. In fact, that's the premise of a story I'll be writing for an upcoming outdoors page in The Roanoke Times.

I have a handful of turkey pictures to catch up on, and will post them over the next few days.

Julie Ball, the fishing-crazed dentist from Virginia Beach, is probably headed back into the record books.

Acting on a tip from a friend she found a bunch of spadefish in the 7- to 8-pound range hanging around a nearshore wreck near Virginia Beach the other day. She decided to try to catch one on 4-pound test line.

If you've caught a spadefish before you know they are unbelievable fighters because of their shape and because they are all muscle. Ball hooked up with a bunch. She caught a dozen small ones and broke off twice that many. She did get a few into the boat. The biggest tipped the scales at 7 pounds, 6 ounces, which was enough to set a line class record. The application is pending.

King mackerel action has been good on the coast, so you know it was only a matter of time before Julie Ball got in on the action. She caught this good one Saturday, Aug. 4.

I'm pretty sure this is the biggest fish I've ever caught. It's a 48-inch red drum I pulled in last Saturday while fishing for cobia in the Chesapeake Bay. I released it so can only guess at the weight. Claude Bain of the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament looked at the pictures and said he felt it was pushing 60 pounds. It was incredibly fat, that much is certain.

We shot some video that day. The production isn't great as I didn't really take the time to shoot b-roll so the producer didn't have much to work with. But it turned out OK despite that. At a few points you'll hear whistles, which covered up some innappropriate language (not from me). I'm not sure why we couldn't just use the same bleep everyone else uses but, whatever. Next time, no swearing.

In the video I say, "I just caught the two biggest fish of my life today." I figured that cobia was close to 50 pounds, and am still surprised it was only 38. So that means it wasn't as heavy as the 46-inch striper I caught (and released) in the Bay about eight years ago. But I caught that striper, which was stout and probably weighed 45 pounds, while trolling with Claude and the only thing I really did was reel it in. I was particularly happy with that cobia and drum because that was a total do-it-ourself trip.

Here's the video.

Exactly a year prior to this past weekend, I spent a day on the Chesapeake Bay with my good friend Kraig Cesar and my brother-in-law, Henry Whelchel. We were targeting flounder. Not only was the fishing terrible -- I think we caught a dogfish and an oyster toad -- but it was hot as hell and bumpy and I ended up getting seasick.

This year flounder season was temporarily closed so we decided to try for cobia. And, much to our surprise, we actually caught one -- this 38-pounder. I'm writing about the trip for Friday's Outdoors page in the Roanoke Times so I'm not going to go into too many details here. But I will say we were chumming and chunking at the Inner Middle Ground Shoals near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

After this cobia we managed two more big fish -- that weren't cobia. Again, details will have to wait.

Even though it was kind of rough and I was the chief bait chunker (and cutting up menhaden isn't for the queasy) I didn't feel a hint of seasickness. The credit goes to the scopolamine patch I wore. Those things work.

I did have one incident over the weekend that made me sick.

On the way down to Virginia Beach I got pulled over for speeding near the I-95/U.S. 460 interchange in Prince George County. At the interchange the speed limit on 460 drops to 45. I was doing 57, and there were at least three officers working a special "enforcement" effort in response to a string of fatal accidents this year. So, even though I haven't gotten a speeding ticket in years, I didn't get a warning. And since there's no hoping that the "B" sample is going to come back negative, I'll just pre-pay the $121 and be done with it.

Virginia saltwater fishing guru Julie Ball sent in this shot of her with a monster amberjack caught off the Virginia coast earlier this week.

If you've ever caught one of these suckers you know they pull like freight trains. Julie said they were fishing at the South Tower with spinning gear and 16-pound test line. A 53-inch amberjack on 16-pound-est line? Now that's a battle.

A lot of fishermen release their amberjacks because the fish tend to have parasites. The grubs are harmless, but not exactly appetizing.

I'm tempted to keep one next time I get a chance after recently sampling an amazing dish that featured smoked amberjack.

It was actually a spread. My friend Terry Tomalin, the outdoors editor at the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, donated it for a cookout I had for some friends on the eve of the recent Outdoor Writers Association of America conference here in Roanoke.

Tomalin didn't get here in time to make the cookout so he sent the stuff by overnight mail -- along with baggies of lemon wedges, jalepenos and crackers. Turn-key party food. You gotta love it. It's a good thing I stopped by my office that afternoon because otherwise it would have been sitting on my desk for five days. That could have been ugly.

At the cookout there was no shortage of good chow, including some smoked salmon brought by my buddies Bill Monroe and Mark Freeman from Oregon. But I'm kind of spoiled on the smoked salmon front because my dad keeps me fairly well supplied, so I did most of my damage on the amberjack spread. I actually had no idea what kind of fish it was until Terry told me a couple days later.

The key, Terry said, is to use a fairly small amberjack. Say, a 20-incher. I've caught them that size in Florida, but I don't even know if fish that small migrate up here with the big boys. I've never seen or caught one. Then again, I haven't exactly been looking for them.

I had hoped to get to Virginia Beach this weekend for a day or two of fishing for striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay. The bay season is closed but catch and release fishing is allowed. Most fishermen are concentrating on the ocean fishery – there’s a tournament under way that drew 280 boats -- which means pressure is relatively light in the bay.

Unfortunately, for a few reasons, the trip isn’t going to happen. That’s disappointing, but maybe I’ll get down there before the fish have all left the bay. If not, the ocean fishing should be decent for a couple of months. The challenge there is timing a trip when the weather is mild enough to let us get out in the ocean in my buddy’s 24-foot Albemarle cuddy cabin.

I formulated my plan for this weekend with the help of Claude Bain of the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament.

Bain said the fish have been concentrated near Cape Charles, along the ledge that runs from around Plantation Light toward the Concrete Ships.

The fishing technique is, in Bain’s words, “So simple it should be criminal.”

First you find the fish, using sonar or looking for diving birds or hooked-up fishermen.

Then you set out four or five rods baited with live eels, hooked through the lips with a 5/0 circle hook. The hook is attached to a 6-foot-long 80- to 100-pound leader attached to the main line with a barrel swivel, above which is 1- or 2-ounce sinker.

Set the eels below bobbers at various depths ranging from 10 to 25 feet deep. Drift with the current and hold on.