Fluke & Sea Bass

Left the dock at 5:30...got to the inlet and thought we were making a big mistake when the Henriques and Viking in front of us went down into the trough and all we saw was their hard tops and antennas of their fly bridges! Hit the bottom of the first trough and took water of next wave over the pilothouse...still not through the inlet it was too late turn around so we proceeded out to the bell buoy to see what it was like. Once out away from the inlet it was not too bad...4-5' rollers with little or no chop on them. I guess we just happened to leave at the wrong time of the ebbing tide as guys who left later said the inlet was not that bad.

Once we picked up everything off the floor we proceeded to the Axel Carlson. Hit several wrecks until we found the ones with fish willing to feed. Marked bait and fish on almost everyone we stopped at.

We had a constant pick of fluke (both shorts and keepers) as well as many keeper sea bass. Actually most sea bass were keepers.

The lack of drift I don't think was the problem with fluking...the ground swell and wicked bottom current in the morning had the fish off. The little bit of wind there was there was opposite the current but once they were going th same direction the fluking bite picked up.

Once the South wind really kicked in we headed into the Mantoloking pipe to give that a shot before heading in. More of the same...plent of sea bass on it and some fluke as well.

All fish were on spearing. I tried various gulp baits throughout the day and did not get a touch on any of them. Tried deadsticked and jigged...spearing did not matter jigged or deadsticked the fish just hammered it everytime.

All in all it was a great day on the water ending the day with seven keeper fluke to 23" and a dozen sea bass to 3 lbs! The highlight of the day was my personal best sea bass at 21.5" and 3 lbs.