Had Steve Magyari, his cousin John, and Andy "Doc" Sokol aboard for today's FTYP trip.
Ran north. Ran into some divebombing birds with BIG fish busting under them off Belmar - hooked about 4 ALLIGATOR sized bluefish, and saw some bonito porposing across the surface. This was first thing, as the wind was CRANKING out of the south.
Continued onward to start fluking, and fished the stretch between Asbury and Long Branch, with most of our efforts coming from deal northward into Long Branch. As we set up on our first fluke drift, the wind already swung west, and we were about 3 miles off on a lump. Nothin' but a few shorts, and the drift was real fast...
Ran inshore as the wind started cranking WNW, put the drift sock in, and worked the 30-45' depths on the shell beds and the somewhat sticky flat rock bottom. Pretty much, we had lock and load fluking at its finest, only problem was that most of the fish were 12-16". Myself, Steve, and Doc were bucktailing, and John was dragging bait. Mixed in, we had a keeper here, a keeper, there, and a few nice seabass.
By day's end, we boated easily 150 fluke, if not more, with 15 making it to the box up to Steve's nice 6# fish, followed by a couple more in the 4# range. Most of the keepers were nice fish, and we had a few right @ the 18" mark. We also threw a load back in the 17.5" range
Real good day, great crew, lots of laughs, and a whole lot of fish.
