Pt. Pleasant Elk's Fluke Tournament

I fished aboard the U Lucky Dog for the tournament with Tommy, Ryan and Mike. We broke the inlet to gorgeous weather, flat calm seas and little wind. Not your ideal fluking conditions but we were determined to make the most of it and were glad the forecast was off a bit.

After a little debate to head North or South the captain pointed the boat North and hit the throttles. It was a quick ride up to the Sandy Hook Reef. Shortly after getting lines in most of the crew was complaining about the sticky bottom and wanted to move over sandy bottom. I tried explaining you had better chances of quality fish in and around structure but they were tired of getting hung up on the bottom after only our first drift. Oddly not that many rigs were lost though, most of the time they were able to get themselves free.

We fished two wrecks on the reef before moving to the edges of the mussel beds. We had constant action with shorts and just legal fluke as well as hordes of short and barely legal sea bass. We did manage a few keeper sea bass and I had one that was almost 18".

After moving around that general area we had a few in the box but nothing to write home about...maybe a three pounder. We tried off of Red Church and the Elberon Rocks and then started heading back South. As we started making our way South the conditions deteriorated quickly and came more in line with the original forecast. At that point we decided to head for the barn. As we neared the inlet we decided to make one last drift on the Axel Carlson.

I had a few good hits right away but failed to hook up. Even dropping back to compensate for the fast drift did not help. I switched out to a two hook-slider rig to try and hook up on the short strikes...still could not catch a break. I will definitely be headed out to that last spot with more favorable conditions next week though.

All in all it was a fun day but not very productive. Everyone caught fish, not everyone caught keepers but we did have some fillets for all and we had a great time.

Bertha Blowout?

Looks like this weekend is a bust for offshore and near shore waters. I guess the remnants of Bertha are making their way inland. We were supposed to fish the Elk's Fluke Tournament but I can't see racing around and getting beat up over fluke. That and if I had to guess fishing will probably be off from the ground swell earlier in the week and the rough conditions tonight. Great conditions for tuna and bass but not finicky ground fish. I will probably just fish the river real early for a couple hours before the boat traffic picks up then go back and work on the boat and the dock.

Bertram Rendezvous 2008

Ah, The Gathering of Eagles. This year was my first year at the Rendezvous. I was invited by Mark to attend with him on the Tigress, a 37 Bertram. We left at about 9 AM on Friday from Pt. Pleasant and had slightly sloppy run south to Absecon Inlet into the wind and sea. We didn't make bad time though arriving shortly after noon.

We got the boat and ourselves cleaned up and immediately the drinks from our boat and others started flowing. The Rum Runner was churning out frozen drinks by the dozen for the welcome dock party along with hot and cold hordevours.

We tried to have lunch but the patio bar was very unaccommodating. My being vegetarian sometimes makes for finding a good meal a little difficult. They had hamburgers and cheese burgers along with chicken sandwiches with and without cheese but could not make a grilled cheese. I even tried for a mushroom Swiss burger, hold the burger patty but the waitress could not figure out how to enter that in the computer. I reciprocated with not being able to figure out more than one percent for the tip.

At this point I am thinking, oh great if this is how the rest of the weekend is going to turn out...I am taking car service home now!

Luckily that turned out to be the only real issue of the weekend. We headed back to the boat for more of the usual festivities...more drinks and finger food.

After dinner we headed over to Trump's for a little gambling. It is not one of my favorite casinos and we didn't spend much time there since no one seemed to be winning. Back to the docks for more drinks it was. Do you see a trend happening here???

We had discussed fishing on Saturday the week before but had figured none of us would be up and were uncertain of the weather. As luck would have it Mark, myself, Mike, and Wayne were all up before 6:30 AM and ready for action. We contemplated on heading out over coffee, then breakfast, then beer. At that point we figured it was a little late and settled in for more drinking and finger food. We did hear later there was a pretty good blue fin tuna bite on the AC Ridge-figures. There is always next year.

Pretty much the rest of the weekend was drinking eating, a little gambling here and there and oh did I mention drinking?

We took a look at the new 41 but I was not impressed at all. The salon seemed cramped with the raised floor are for the dinette. This did create a pretty decent size second stateroom though. The cockpit was also a little strange...the gunwales were very wide, about 18" wide. Plus with the higher freeboard of the cockpit you would probably need another 2' on your gaffs in order to be able to reach the fish. For the roughly $900k price tag I was not impressed. Even less impressing was the cruise speed. I did not go for a ride but was told that at 75% it is only about a 20 knot cruise and 26 wide open.

Saturday night's dinner was a pig roast on the rooftop of the patio bar. There was also lobster for an additional fee. I think there were two pigs but not sure as I did not investigate too well. I had a salad, some corn, a $10 Coors Light and headed back to the boat to eat and consume alcohol that was already paid for.

Sunday morning was just spend getting the boat ready for the ride home, breakfast and refueling.

The run home was smooth and downhill despite the 3-5 foot seas. We left around 10:30 AM and arrived home about 1 PM. There was however pea soup fog where visibility at times was maybe 50-75'. About 5 miles offshore visibility increased to about a quarter mile for most of the run North. A few guys ducked into Barnegat, not really sure why. They all complained that you could not see the jetties till between them and that there were dozens of boats all over the place. The fog did clear for them once inside the bay though. We decided to keep running north and go in through Manasquan and deal with the canal again. Once we hit the bathing beach on Island Beach State Park the fog pretty much lifted and all we had left was haze.

Other than the fog the trip down and back was uneventful for us, we did hear on the radio one boat seemed to have blown a head gasket and another boat had and engine shutdown while running but never hear what the outcome of that was. All-in-all it was a great weekend with pretty good weather and good friends. Can't wait for next year.

I should have walked around with the camera more as there would have been some very interesting shots but this is what I ended up with...Bertram Rendezvous 2008 Gallery.

Fluke are Heare

Left the dock at 5:20 and was up to Monmouth Beach at 6:35. First time in a long time we did not catch the train bridge on the way out!

Had two buddies from the marina aboard and I did not even get the engine off and my bait in the water before the first keeper hit the deck. A fat 19 incher. Minutes later we had more coming over the rails. We took a long first drift and the fish were in small pods in different parts of the drift so we started moving around to each spot.

There was constant, almost non-stop action as long as you worked and were not lazy about moving the boat back over the piece after a short drift. Water was 68-65 degrees. I say it back-wards because it went down as the South wind picked up. Went through about 8 lbs of spearing.

Made a couple other stops off the tennis courts for sea bass but only got one keeper and bunch of shorts. Did manage another keeper fluke there and another stop off the orange condos North of Red Church. Again short sea bass and tons of short fluke with a few more keepers mixed in.

Highlight of the day was we went up with two boats, the other guys were slow out of the gate so we had a few minutes on them. When they radioed to say they were about three miles away over the side went a bag of popcorn. Then two minutes later they were all excited on the radio asking if were in the action with the huge pod of birds working. Of course we said yes, just North of it drifting South into. Which was a line of crap since we had a North drift but the looks on their faces and words that soon followed yelled in our direction were priceless when they figured out what the bird activity was from.

Started home when some of the rollers started topping 5'. Probably was a good move as the inlet was not bad at that point but on the change of the tide it looked like it was going to get interesting. Coming into the inlet there were breakers topping the jetties and crashing almost up to the Tiki Bar.

Ended the day with 14 keepers to just under 5 lbs, only two skates, no doggies, three birds (always welcome for crab bait) and countless short fluke and sea bass. Another great day on the water with good weather, good friends and good times.

First Fluking Trip of '08

We got a late start due to partying and watching the neighbors fireworks across the creek.

Left the dock about 5:30 with the intentions of looking for some bass early and then going fluking. Coming out of the inlet that sunken fishing boat is way closer than the half mile reported. It is more like 150-200 yards off the North jetty. The aerials and booms were visible above the water and the smell of diesel was pretty strong...there was no visible sheen on the water though.

Had some great looking pods off Spring Lake...bunker spraying, jumping clean out of the water not just flipping. But did not get a single run-off.

After a the rain passed and it looked like there would be no lightning we started running North. Didn't see much or mark much till we got just South of Shark River. Off in the distance we saw hundreds of birds working...we figured we hit the mother load. Wrong! turned out to be about 200 carcasses, some filleted some not...all stripers. Not sure if it was from a head boat in the inlet or by-catch from a netter that they took some fillets. There was also a lot of garbage and debris in the area. We kept pushing North.

Our final stop Monmouth Beach. We setup on our first fluke drift and had fish on and in the boat immediately and even double headers! There were a lot of 17.5" fish but we managed 10 keepers all over 19" with the largest being 23.5" at 4 lbs 13 oz. We had pretty solid action for over three hours with about 100 fish caught between the two of us. And for once I caught the largest fish on the boat. I bet if we did not try for stripers first we would have had no problems putting together a limit catch, the early morning bite is always much better up there.

We had pretty clear/clean water up North, it was 62 when we got there and 64.x when we left. When breaking the inlet in the morning we had 61.x. Entering the inlet on the way in there was 59.7 degree water in the river. Again the bait of choice fluking was spearing...we went through over three pounds in just over three hours. Most fish hit the spearing but we also had a bunch on the bucktails with pearl Gulp! jerk shads.

Weather Sucks

Well, Mark called off the trip to the Hudson again this weekend. I hope this does not turn into a regular thing like it did last year. We went six weeks in a row with crappy weather before we were able to get offshore. It just doesn't pay to get beat up on the ride out and the ride in and hope you don't run into a thunder storm are really get your butt kicked.

So now it is on to plan B. We will be heading North early looking for some hold out bass and then on to Monmouth Beach for some fluking. We did our first fluke trip of 2007 the first week of July and had a limit catch so hopefully we can have a repeat in 2008.

Weather Woes

It is amazing how unstable the weather is this time of year. If you watch the forecasts through out the day over the course of a few days you could literal go bald in a few short days. We have been trying to plan an offshore exploratory trip for weeks now. One day its a go, then the next it is off...oh wait two hours later the forecast is great! What the hell...come on Mother Nature throw us a bone here.