Today we fished the Lake Murray Troop appreciation striper derby. 22 boats in all I believe each boat laden with 2 to 4 Wounded Warrior Project veterans who are treated to a day of striper fishing and prize giveaways and a meal at the end of the day. I was on boat #1 with an Army vet named David and a Marine vet named Brian. We were on the boat of captain James "Fogman" Lindler  and his son Robert who was mate for the day We set out first thing in the morning before the sun came up after getting our boat number and breakfast courtesy of Lake Murray Sailing Club. The fishing was from 0430 to 1130 AM. We got to our first spot and we started to throw lines. We were on top of a school about 40 feet down and we literally could not get all of our lines in the water. Stripers were hitting our drop lines before we could get them to the bottom or within a few seconds of getting to our desired depth. The action was hot and fast for about an hour and once we slowed down Captain James counted our fish. 25! That's it we're done! Lets go home! We filled our limit at exactly 7am and was finished. Captain James waited on a friend who was chartering some other folks to come over and put his clients on some fish and we left for the dock. Once at the dock we weighed our biggest fish. I had the biggest fish on our boat at 7.69lbs. Then began the waiting game. We waited on all the boats to come in and weigh for big fish and then lunch would be served at 12pm. As the boats came in I was bumped to second, then third, then eventually fell out of the top five which was prize spots. Then we went in for lunch and door prizes and I won a blackstone fgrill in the raffles! All in all this was a great event and one that I will remember for a lifetime. So many folks put in so much hard work just to treat us to a special day and I couldn't be more grateful!

That is really awesome!! Great event and glad you wrecked them!!

Sweet. 

Even got interviewed by the news! lol

 

https://www.wltx.com/video/news/local/wounded-warriors-fishing-derby-at-lake-murray/101-30d6d33b-dbf1-4488-8101-a7ec0c73eb62

Thanks for going out of your way to brighten some vets' day! Most of my friends from growing up ended up as GWOT combat veterans. That stuff really matters.

 

Also, stripers are a total blast. Got into my first one unexpectedly in the surf this year. Fantastic fight!

What fun! Thanks for being part of it.