Striper Success

We broke the inlet about 5 am, looked left and there was an armada between the North Jetty and the Spring Lake Hotel. Took a quick cruise past it on the outside out of curiosity...seemed to be the JCAA Fluke Tourney fleet. Did not mark any bait, not surprising with the amount of activity there. Turned South and hit the throttles.

With reports of fish in Spring Lake and the South, Southwest winds for Friday and overnight we ran down to Bay Head figuring the bait and fish moved south. We first setup in 35' of water, marked lots of bait and a few fish. Had several small pods of bunker with bait spraying and coming clean out of the water. Had a couple baits slashed by blues and kept moving from pod to pod.

About 6:30 moved out to 50-60-' water as the sun rose higher and the haze started burning off. Had a bigger pod with a few birds diving. Me and Tommy both snagged bunker at the same time and after about 10 seconds both rods doubled over and line started peeling off. Unfortunately the only two spinning rods I have are relatively light with 20# braid on them. After getting nearly spooled I started backing down on both fish and reeling at the same time. About 10 minutes into the battle and having little line on the spool I loosened the drag a bit. That was about when Tommy broke off...probably due to the small spool exerting more drag than the full spool was set to.

I got the fish up after another few minutes about 15' off the transom and once she saw the boat she was off to the races again and we were forced to back down on it again. Finally after about 20 minutes she was in the net...41.5" bass! My first live lining bunker and first of 2008.

We quickly moved back on that pod and put a baits out on the conventional gear and had run-offs right away. Both came unglued about 3 minutes in. We had one other run-off a few minutes later that never came tight.

We continued to mark bait and fish but by 7:30 it seemed the bite was over and we headed back in.

We had water from 56 to 63 degrees, we stopped over a few wrecks just to see if there was any life in 80' and they looked pretty barren.

Despite losing a few fish it was a great day and a lot of fun on the water with light tackle. The fish weighed in at 25.1 pounds and 41.5". Seemed pretty light for its length, there was nothing in its stomach when I cleaned it. Not completely surprising after a long fight I guess it lost its breakfast on its way to the boat.