Decided to take a couple of days off work to shakedown the Fluka Brasi and kick off the season.. Made the drive down from NY early Sat, am with my buddy John, and met our friend Dave from Trenton at the dock.. Left Keansburg at about 7:30 and was met by a bit of a nasty E wind.. not exactly the conditions I was hoping for the first trip of the season, but the boat was running fine.. As this is my first spring fishing the bay I decided to spend most my time trolling to look around and get a feel for things.. Started off slow for the first couple hours, but finally had our first knockdown on the plugs, and boated a nice striper about 29".. After that we had steady action the rest of the morning with Bass and Blues, pulling Bomber 26a's on braid between Keyport and Keansburg .. Ended the day early due to the continued nasty chop with 6 bass released from about 26-31", and a pile of Blues..
On Sunday, John and I skipped the AM to allow the front to pass, and got out about noon in beautiful weather.. We went back to where we left off the day before near Keansburg and where right back in business with Blues and Bass all afternoon, with the Bass bite picking up later in the day..while we where sitting at anchor chunking to take a break from the troll we had the pleasure of seeing Young Gull , who kindly offered us some freshies.. But we didn't spend too much time bait fishing this week..It was great to see a friendly face! Ended sun.with around 8 stripers and again, a ton of blues.. See if you can guess from these pics what color Bombers they where eating
Started Mon. am at 7:30 with Dave and my bro Rob joining John and I.. We spent the first hour or so around Keansburg and picked up 1 bass about 28" and a horde of bluefish.. We made a run toward the Hook and made a stop on a likely looking dropoff with nice marks, and where immediately into Bass.. Proceeded to work over the area for several hours with near constant action until the tide slacked..After a short mid tide break for sandwiches, we moved around closer to Romer and got back on the troll, with again steady action on relentless blues, with a few Bass mixed in..Quit about 4 with everyone exhausted and about 15 bass to about 18-19 # and god knows how many Blues.. While we had easily released a 4 man Limit (actually only a handfull of Bass we got in the 4 days was under 28") we killed 1 30" Bass for Dave to take home and 1 about the same to send home to Ma..
Tuesday it was just John and I again at 7:30 and we ran right back to where we left off.. Had our first bluefish bite before the 2nd rod was in , and it never stopped until at about 2 pm after releasing a double of Blues, we looked at each other and said enough! We only had 3 Bass on Tuesday, but they where all nice fish over 30".. At about 11am John lost a big one near the boat after a long battle that will likely haunt him for a while, but at that point our plugs where so mangled from blues, most of the hooks where bent, so my bad
.. All in all a fantastic few days of fishing, in mostly gorgeous weather with great company.. Man, I needed that
