First trip of the year for us today and we had a full boat with Gary, Frank, Alex, Jeremiah, Dave W, and Ryan H aboard. Our gameplan was to shoot outside and head north to find those jig fish.
When we cracked the inlet at 645 the ocean was big and nasty due to the cranking NNE going 15-20, we buried the bow completely about a half dozen times in honest 6-8' footers - I gave the guys the option to tough it out or to go in the river and flounder fish and WAIT IT OUT; we did the latter. Made one drop at the tide change and had 4 bites, landing 2 flounder to 15". We made one more drop before my phone started ringing so we shot back outside and headed north.
Ocean was much nicer when we broke this time and it was a "nice" 3-5' chop - as we went north it laid down even more. We ran around a dozen miles and got into the fish just inside the 3 mile line. Making long drifts and bouncing Jersey Jay's 5 oz. krocs we got into a slowish pick of nice fish in the 32-37" range. Gary got the first bass of the year on a green tailed 67 - the only one on a jig taken today.
Once that dried up we went looking inshore and found some gannets working, and had one quick shot where we nailed a few fish, then it was back offshore to the reads where we put a few more keepers in the box.
As the afternoon went on the bite slowed considerably, and it crapped out even more when the SE kicked in. Nevertheless, we wound up boating a total of 9 bass, all keepers topped by Ryan's first fish of the year which was in the 20-25# range and had a couple of whole bunkers in its gullet. The bass seemed to be ON the bottom, right where we were reading the bait.
Good day for us, as Frank and Ryan both got their 2 fish limits and the other guys caught well as well. Got back to the dock around 5 with the 9 bass and 2 nice flounder in the box. Real nice opening day for a great crew!!! Thanks for coming down guys!!!
