My daughter's family  from Pittsburgh  and my son's family from San Francisco arrived on Saturday  July 5th for a week long visit so I had cleared the deck to have time with the family.

My son, George  has cod fished with me most of his life and handles a jig stick as well as anyone I know.   My son-in-law Bruce hails from West Virginia and started cod fishing with me just last year.  A quick learner and Bruce has become a very good ground fisherman as evidenced by the two 50lb fish he is holding on the home page of this web site.

We decided to target an area of Jeffreys ledge were I have been doing very well on market cod and haddock the past few trips.  The boys were interested in filling their freezers and not trophy hunting so we headed for the grounds around 0500.  Seas held a slight chop which flattened out completely the farther offshore we traveled.

We arrived on the ledge and immediately found codfish willing to inhale our jigs and special cod flies I tie..  Most of the day found bent rods and perfect eating size fish hitting the deck with the the largest cod  around 12 lbs  class and haddock in the  3 to 5 lbs class.

The dogfish were in the area and could be found pursuing jig hooked codfish to the surface.  I haven't used bait for most of the season since May as the dogfish are so thick  but I have found the larger haddock we are catching are readily taking our jigs.  One of the pesky canines reminded me to pay attention to what I am doing as he managed to stick my hand with his tail spine as I was unhooking him from a bare jig he had taken.  Their spines are full of bacteria so I let the puncture wound bleed profusely as I applied the wash down hose to it.  The rear deck of the boat started to look like I had dressed a tuna by the time I was done.  The hand was sore for the rest of the day and did swell but by the next day all had returned to normal.  Lesson learned ....AGAIN!!

The day produced fair amounts of market cod and haddock and around 1400 hours we decided to head for the barn.  No bragging fish were landed this day but plenty of nice clean cod & haddock fillets now fill the families' freezers and will be enjoyed during the days ahead.

Captain George