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.

Last Ditch Bass Effort

Thanks for calling us down EMALS (BFH Member). We were originally working some pods off Bay Head that every few minutes were spraying out of the water. But between the dozen boats not a single fish was boated.

So we ran down to Mantoloking by EMALS. We did see a few fish caught but wanted to escape the fleet so we ran down to about Lavalette in deeper water (65') and pretty much the same thing. Tons of bait, marked fish but none biting. After screwing around with a thresher on bass gear for about 10 minutes we started heading back North.

Around Mantoloking we saw up in front of us birds working, huge splashes, real choppy water and reddish/purplish water. Monster blues had a good sized bunker pod corralled and were working them South at pretty good clip. We stopped to screw around with them and then saw some bass mixed in up on top. We were amazed! It was around noon and we were only in 30' water. Had a couple good run-offs with marks on the baits but did not hook up with any bass. We boated a few blues to almost 13 pounds and then again...our top bait gets slammed. Huge splash and big hole where the bait was. Line starts screaming off, this time it figures its a spinning rod. Then we saw the tail. We just thumbed the spool since we knew we had no shot at this thresher. Another beautiful day on the water.