I was thinking about hitting the Gambler today for some jig fishing. However, Capt. Joe invited me out to fish with him, John and Bob G. instead. So we met up at the usual start time and headed south out of the inlet looking for some action. We stopped on some marks and jigged for a few minutes without a hit, so we continued south for awhile.
Finally found some better marks and started jigging in about 60' of water. It wasn't long before, "Fish on!" was heard and that was pretty much the story all day! We made a decent amount of drifts through that area catching fish on just about every stop.
We managed to boat a keeper striper (around 30") fairly early. However, most of the fish being caught were gator sized blues. And there were a lot of them! We wound up keeping around eight or nine of the demons (up to 12 lbs. or so) and and we caught and released dozens more!
Stripers were a bit more elusive for us today. We did catch three and had two keepers for the day. The bigger of the two was just under 32", caught by Bob G.
We saw a lot of familiar boats working the same area as us. The Queen Mary, Miss Belmar Princess and the Gambler were out there, as well as Captain Allen on the Reel Class. It seemed like all were catching fish today. We even had a visit from a guy in a boat named "Lou Na Sea" (Ha! Ha! sound familiar?) who stopped by to see how the fishing was.
As far as jigs, most anything was working at one time or another. Diamonds (with and without tails) worked. Butterfly jigs were hot as well, accounting for two of the three stripers caught today.
It is interesting to note that despite the terrific action we had all day, the bird play was nearly non-existent. If you were looking to the skies to find the fish, you never would have found them. Instead we relied on Joe's trusty sonar to put us on the fish consistently all day!
Once again, it was a fantastic day on the Irish Ayes! Great fishing, and better yet, great company as well! Sadly, it looks like this may be the last trip of the year for her, as she is scheduled to be pulled out before this weekend. Here's to the end of a terrific 2008 season on the Irish Ayes! What a great way to end the year!
Thanks Joe!
