I can honestly say, I've never had to work so hard in my life to catch fish!!
Even with the best of conditions in the prime area's I have fished for 35 years the bite has been "tough" too say the least. When we do find a line of fish, like this morning, a nice pic of shorts and a couple keepers, we go back to do it again, and catch crap! Everyone asks, what do you think is going on? Was it Sandy, Water temps, lack of bait? For the first time in my career, I have NO answer.
I have fished rough bottom, mud, snags, channels any place that I thought would produce even with the best of conditions only to come home disappointed.
Yes, we have been catching some very nice fish, probably more quality fish on average than the past couple of years, just not enough. There have been times when we could fish the beach and always have action on the shorts just to keep the customers happy, that hasn't happened this season. Our beach has been dead. I thought with the 18 inch size limit this year, some of the old haunts I've fished on the NY side would be a home run only to find a few fish here and there.
What scares me is the lack of bait life on the bottom, the shrimp and readings we would see when the bite used to be on...what happened? Was Sandy that powerful that it killed off all the start of the food chain?
We started to see more bottom life in some area's this past week and a few more short fish but nothing like it should be. This time of year the Reach channel should be loaded with bait and it's not, with the exception of Bunkers, and we all know Fluke ain't eating those bunkers!
So what do we do? We go out everyday with the same passion to catch our customers fish, we look for the perfect drifting conditions, we wait for the change of tide bite and pray that today will be the day our customers will remember, and not for getting skunked!
All of us do the best we can do, we take pride in being the best at it but sometimes Mother Nature bites us in the ass and brings us back to reality. We are just fishermen, we fish, if they are hungry and here, we catch them, certainly not for lack of effort on my part, or anyone else's....
We are Chartered this coming "FRIDAY AND SATURDAY" Morning.
Capt. Ron
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