Sunday 6/6: Had the Mike Accordino charter aboard today for a bass trip. Due to two guys backing out on Mike last week we filled it with Nick and Dan, and Mike had his buddies Jake, AJ, and Adam to fill out the 6 man crew.
Made bait real fast, as there are miles of bunker just outside our inlet, but only problem was we couldn't find a bass again today. Fished in the pods, and off on some structure, not even a sniff on the bass.
By 845 the guys had had enough so we went off to do some seabassin' on the snags in 65-75' of water. Again immediate action, but today the keepers were a little harder to come by. Most of the keepers were NMR's (no measurement required), and the shorts were no doubters too. We made 5 drops with numerous wiggles on the pieces, and pieced the catch together. Lots of double headers, but lots of lulls in the action followed by some flurries.
By 11:30, seas were building to a solid 4-6' with an occasional 7' thrown in with the heave coupled with the hard SW wind, and we had a couple of guys down already with a bout of mal de mer, and a third on his way, so we decided to pull anchor and head back home.
We wound up with ~35 keepers, probably a few more, topped by AJ's pig humpback of 4# (weighed on the digital ) plus several in the 2# range. Lots of nice biscuits today! Also, a lot of shorts. We also had quite a bit of bergall life. Again, no ling or cod today, and for the first time this season, no tog.
Good day, glad we got the morning in, wish the wx could've cooperated for this great crew!
Saturday 6/5: Had Fred Shaw and pals Joe, Alex, Brian, Vin, and Susan along for their annual charter.
Broke the inlet around 630 and headed south to find bunker literally everywhere we looked. Making bait was no problem whatsoever. I think we coulda netted the bunker with our long handled bass net! Only problem, not many fish on them. Between 630 and 945 we had 1 runoff, that was it. We made it as far as Seaside, no good shakes anywhere in that zone.
So, we put the seabass rigs on and headed to some snags a few miles off. First drop was lock and load no doubt keepers for the first 10 minutes or so - these fish were all over 14" - after that we picked away at some shorts and a few more keepers, so we made a wiggle and got back on them. I decided to drop down a diamond jig since the bass were again spitting up sandeels - and first drop I nailed a nice 15" TOG on a 27 with a red tail!! This was easily my first tog on a diamond jig and I was shocked to say the least to "jig up" a blackfish!
Second drop was horrible, just a few fish. Third drop was lights out. Fished a little deeper, and put the screws to em'. Numerous double headers, and lots of 1.5-3# seabass going into the cooler along with the shorts and ever present bergalls.
By 130 with the bite still very good, the crew had had enough and we pulled anchor and made our way back to the dock. We had ~75 keeper seabass in roughly 3.5 hours fishing, with easily twice that amount in fish, as well as the one tog that was returned. No ling or cod for us today. Great trip, lots of meat for a great crew who had a blast as usual!!
