Skunk, his son Jim and I worked a half bushel of clam today. First target was Romer but on arrival found the boys with the big rakes working the bottom like you would peel a sack of potato. Needless to say there was no chance of anchoring anywhere near them. So we opted for a spot that looked promising about 1/4 nm to the east. Anchored and chumming in no time. No action for the first 20 mins. Then two of the poles get bumped. Rods are at the ready and the strike is on. Skate. Next one up. Skate. More cracked clams sent to the bottom in a ripping current. Then the demons arrived. Not in full assault mode but rather picky. Some real slender others just starting to fill out from feeding heavy on anything that crossed their paths. Stuck around for a couple of hours and entertained ourselves hoping that a bass or two would be in the mix. Not today. Made three other moves with the same result. We had donut on the bass. Just an observation.... but over the past month you couldn't put clam out without a few takers. First the shorts in the back bay, then the slot size and keepers in the same locations and further out on the shoal and the knoll. They didn't seem to turn their nose up to good glob of shell snot. Since the arrival of the bunker, the quality of the bass has improved but they seem to be increasingly less interested in the clam as time passes. We had a few fresh bunk with us but laying those out produced the same results. More bluefish. Not sure if the bass scattered (perhaps made a beeline up the river) or I scouted the wrong area today. Oh well... we had action just not the type we were searching.
With Fleet week on us, we had a parade of navy vessels coming through the ambrose for a good part of the morning. There's a lot of hardware in the harbor right now
. Here's a long distance pic. Quality is not the best.
