By Chris Mills “Gills”

August 22, 2022

It was a stormy day with a decent low-pressure system coming through, light winds, but pouring rain on and off. I had back-to-back sport fishing that day. The current and conditions for the morning trip were perfect and allowed us to catch over 40 fish, but the afternoon was going to be tough with a slack current (not the best conditions).

Knowing all this when the afternoon trip came, I said to the crew “this morning, the fishing was lights out, but we have very different conditions for this afternoon. If you want, we can roll the dice and go cast lures to try to find some big fish, or we can go bottom fishing which is better for our conditions”. They all voted to go big or go home. We went out to our fishing spots, and immediately caught 3 slot size fish (28-35 inch)! Then, someone caught 1 more, a 46-inch fish. 

Now, that was the biggest striper any student has ever caught at NESS… I took the time to explain that this is a fish you’ll never forget, and the whole crew was blown away by its size. So, I revived it and let it go, passed some high fives around, and said let’s get back on them. 

Then, the bite completely shut off and we couldn’t catch anything over the next 2 hours. I gave the students multiple opportunities to switch gears and target other fish, but they knew and understood their circumstances and decided to keep grinding. As time was running out, I said, “Ok crew, last drift make it count” and sure enough, the same student that caught the 46-incher made it count. 

As he was reeling in, we all were looking down at his lure to see the beast. It hit his lure so hard and started streaming line off the reel, we were all screaming in disbelief at what was happening, and cleared the rest of the lines so everyone could experience the thrill. 

After fighting for 10 minutes, we landed the fish and we were shaking. While everyone was screaming in joy and excitement, I said “get the tape, get the tape!” A student handed me the measuring tape…it was 50 inches, the holy grail of striped bass fishing. We couldn’t believe it, it made the 46-inch fish look small (for reference a 46-inch fish is maybe 35lbs a 50-inch fish is about 50lbs). We took some photos, revived her and let her go, and then headed back to the dock with huge smiles on everyone’s faces.