First FTYP trip of this summer. Had Tom Kreible, Ryan Helmstetter, and Al Durso aboard for the trip. All bucktailers, so the intention was to do this all day.
Ran all the way up north, and the first drop was in about 50' on some rough patches. Immediately got into some small seabass, that was it. Drift was fast with the WNW wind and current, so we ran in closer to the beach, tried 35' depths. Found more fluke, a couple of keepers, a bunch of shorts, and more seabass with a couple going in the box.
Once that dried up, I took a shot to get in real close and tight on some snaggy stuff in 18-25' of water, and it was game on. Drifted this area from roughly 9:30-2PM, had pretty much the drop and reel kinda thing going on every drift. Loads of shorts, but mixed in we had some nice keepers up to ~4#. We had several double headers, and Al was lucky enough to nail a double header keeper on the teaser and the bucktail!
On the way home, we made a drop looking for bigger fish in 52' again, and had a few more real nice 19-20" fish come up, but no real pigs.
Wound up with ~100 fluke, 21 keepers made it to the box to 23", as well as a half dozen chunky seabass. Only 4 fish were right at 18", the rest were 19-23". Real good day, hope this sets the stage for the rest of the summer!
(Pics are compliments of Al's I-Phone - I left my memory stick at home!! DOH!)
