July 31, 2007
Year after a pukefest, a bay trip turns out much better
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.
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