Eastmans Pollock - Food Bank - Outstanding

[ytuna]

On Friday, December 6 a group of about 30 anglers sailed on Fishark charter on one of Eastman's fine boats. The goal was to catch a lot of Pollock for the New Hampshire Food Bank. The trip was a huge success in every respect. The food bank received 700 pounds of pristine fillets. A custom rod was donated and raffled off. The raffle raised over $3,000 for the food bank. Everybody brought food to share with their fellow anglers and it was a feast (see picture).

We left at 5 AM and steamed for 2.5 hours. At our first stop it took about 8 minutes to get the bite started. Then fish started coming over the rail. More throwbacks than keepers but plenty of keepers to keep folks interested. The second stop was similar. The third and last stop of the day was unbelievable. For over and hour and half you could not get your jig to the bottom. Double headers ruled the day. Many of us removed our teasers in order to get our jigs to the bigger fish on the bottom. If you left your teaser on, normally you would be loaded up 100' off the bottom. Teaser colors that worked particularly well were green and purple.

The crew did a fine job of dealing with the inevitable tangles and cleaning fish. They started cutting at 9 am and were still at it when we hit the dock.

All the anglers really worked well together to maximize the catch and to minimize the time the crew had to take away from cutting. A lot of fish were swung that normally would have been gaffed.

A few ling and whiting rounded out the catch.
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