After hearing report after report on how good it was yesterday afternoon I had to coerce today's charter to move it to the afternoon. John Kuhles and his crew obliged and we met at noontime ready to target some slob bass. John brought Bill, Darren, and Greg K (Proteus) aboard for the trip.
Ran south, got into bunker off Mantoloking, and filled the wells quickly. Greg hooked a beautiful fish, our first of the day moments later on a live bait - that fish turend out to be our biggest and it dropped a scale to just over 40#! We got a call from Max from Andrea's toy to shoot south as it was going off, so we did that. More bunker down there, and we had a few runoffs and a couple more fish. At this point it was maybe 2PM....
Right after that, my other deckhand Michael who is also a PPB police officer called to tell me that it was GOING OFF up off Jenks, so we hightailed it back north.
On the way, we found a pod of bunker getting demolished by bass in tight to the beach - we got in there, and had instant bass on both live baits, dead baits, and plugs. We stuck with these fish for awhile, until a load of boats showed, then we headed north, finding another pod getting annihilated by monster bass. On this pod we continued catching slob bass, as the bass were knocking bunker clear out of the water, and were exploding with whitewater all around us. It was insane!!! This particular pod got pushed right in on the beach, and we stayed with them for maybe a mile, until they got pushed down by yet more boat traffic.
Around 4PM we hopscotched north of our inlet and again found fish BLOWING UP from Sea Girt up to Belmar. Readings were insane. At this point we were out of live bunker - but it didn't matter. These fish took dead, cut, etc as well as plugs with reckless abandonment. We were simply stopping on readings, throwing plugs and dead bunkers, and still catching 2-3 fish a drift.
Highlight of the day was a football field of bass and bunker creating havoc right in front of the E&S in Spring Lake - fish were everywhere just destroying the bunker!!! (I will post pics from Kenny's camera)
Called it a trip by 7PM as we were simply exhausted. We easily boated 30+ bass, every one of them was over 25#; most were in that 25-35# cookie cutter range, but we had several over 35# topped by Greg's big fish. We easily boated 20 of those fish on plugs - pencils, darters, swimmers, and regular poppers while the rest were boated on live or dead bunker. Out of the 30+, we kept 9, releasing the rest of the fish to fight another day, nice and healthy
What can I say - this trip was one of the top 5 bass trips I've ever had and will go down in the books as a great bass trip catching big slobs!!! John and his crew were fantastic, and they will be back on Reel Class next Sunday!!! Thanks again guys!!
