Had Socks, Dave W, Ryan H, and Scott aboard today for an open boat trip. With the lack of bass bites yesterday I asked the guys last night if they would like to do a little change of pace and go offshore to target cod, they obliged, and this morning off we went.
First drop was on a high spot in about 120' and we had some nice life right away with some cod in mixed sizes coming up, as well as a few pout and one jumbo sea raven all making it to the box. We also boated a pollock of 12" as well. After about a half hour and a shift around the piece, we got covered up by dogfish.
When the wind dropped out, we went up on the drift and had a slow pick.
A move a few miles south yielded no bites, while a few drifts in a debris field of a wreck got us a few more cod both shorts and keepers.
We then moved to another rockpile/debris field and finally found what we were looking for. Drifts over the piece were yielding mostly keeper cod in the 23-27" range, as well as a few ling. By noon time, the fishing started getting flat-out ridiculous, we had 2-4 rods hooked up at a time with keeper cod flying over the rails! Mike and I were gaffing fish almost constantly as the guys were rebaiting and getting the rigs back down.
We easily boated 75 codfish, if not more, and KEPT 40 (give or take a couple) as the 125 qt. cooler was completely filled to the brim!! All the fish we kept were over 23" and the biggest was about 12#. We also had 6 ling (mostly jumbos), 6 pout, and the fat sloppy sea raven which made it to the fillet table as well.
What a day... I would've never dreamed we'd be catching cod, quality cod like this in NJ waters 5 years ago - this was a day for the books and we could've easily kept catching until dark if we wanted. Ryan, Dave, and Socks all estimated they had at least 20 cod each with most of them being over 21", while Scott came on late and bagged another 10 while Mike and I each put a few in as well. This is one for the books and let's hope these codfish keep coming back!!!
