So tomorrow we're off for the last summer hurray of 2012. Don't know if your kids go back soon, but mine go back September 10th! That should be illegal. Anyway, we're off to beautiful Raystown Lake in Pennsylvania. About five months ago my daughter was flipping through the PA Fish Digest and found the add for Raystown Lake. When we got home we looked it up and and found Seven Points Marina and their houseboat rentals. After gathering the clan and seeing what everyone thought we decided to give it a go and were lucky enough that they had an opening and one that is dog friendly.Today my buddies Capt Jason Dapra of Blitzbound Guide Service and Canio from the soon to open Red Bank Sub Shop gave me and my sons a help getting the cap back on my pickup. I like my rig with the cap on because that means it's either spring or fall, and that means fishing and charters! We'll be on the boat the Weekender, a 60 foot houseboat with two bedrooms, full kitchen, large bath, two levels, hot tub on the roof, and slide off the second level in the rear.
So after we loaded up the cap and washed it my daughter and I went to WalMart to see if we could get any remaining tubes that the kids could have some fun on. We found four of them, and only one, was marked. It was the small whale and it was $12. So I went and found someone to help me price the others which I though total would be about $50. After I explained that I needed help she said, " Honey, get those things out of here. Two dollars a piece and I'll throw the 1,000 big balls in for free. Take everything please!" So, we loaded up our cart and now we're set up for some fun.
Now, this is a family trip, not a fishing trip. Kind of like when Cindy and I went to Newport, RI a month or two ago. See below.
Oh, yeah, there's 50 plus pound stripers in the lake! Along with large and smallmouths, muskies, salmon, trout, perch, and more and more and more. But back to the stripers. There's supposedly a lot of them and the current PA record of 53.12 pounds comes out of Raystown, caught by guide Sparky Price of Trophy Guide Service.
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| Sparky Price of Trophy Guide Service |
So while Erin and were at WalMart I grabbed a couple of Mister Twisters for the kida and a some big jigs and metal that I'll throw on my one and only big fish spin rod, a Quantum XR-7. Don't know how old it is, how old the line is, or where I even got it from. So even though I have no real knowledge or experience with spin fishing for stripers I somehow feel okay with our chances. I have heard the best way to catch them is liveline rainbow trout down deep. It can't be that hard to find them without electronics on the boat, hey it's only 118 miles long!
" I do not like spinfishing, I do not like spinfishing, I do not like spinfishing...."
