This Saturday was the LBI Cup which is a striper tournament held by the Beach Haven Marlin & Tuna Club. The tournament was very successful and over 40 boats entered. The winning fish brought in several thousand dollars. I set out on Saturday with a great group of guys who booked me last minute for the tournament. We left the dock and headed south towards Atlantic City in search of bunker. The weather was perfect and the seas were calm so spotting the bunker would be no problem. Unfortunately, we did not see any bunker so we decided to anchor up at Wreck Inlet and chunk bunker in the white water. The water temperature was around 60 degrees and the conditions were ideal. After about an hour and a half of heavy chunking, we did not even have a touch. I had several captain friends close by and they reported similar accounts. I decided to pick up and head North in search of bunker. We ran north to about Spray Beach and had some impressive marks on the fish finder about 40 feet down. We decided to troll and lowered an umbrella rig and a bunker spoon down to the marks. We managed one knock down in about an hour on the troll. I decided to head back to the Little Egg Inlet and try our luck chunking in the rips once again. This effort proved once again fruitless except for the monster smooth dogfish we were catching. These were the biggest dogfish I have ever seen. I weighed one of the larger ones for fun and it weighed 15.5 pounds. I must say, they give a pretty good fight and since we were not catching any bass, it kept us entertained. We must have caught 20-25 dogfish in the 10 to 16lb range. Three O'Clock was the cut-off time for the tournament and we headed back in with no bass. We had a fun day on the water and worked out tails off to find a bass but it was not to be. There were a few bass caught in the tournament, but many people went home with a similar experience as we had. The best bass fishing of the year last year was in June as the bunker appeared in large masses. I am hoping for that once again this year.
Sunday started out rainy and turned into a beautiful day. I fished in the Great Bay using Gulp Minnows and squid. We had plenty of action but all the fluke were short. We did not come home with any keepers but it was nice day and we had steady action. All in all, it was a beautiful May weekend but the fishing could of been better. The water has warmed up about 12 degrees from the previous week. It is still very early in the season and I expect good things to happen soon.
