Had John M, his buddy Steve, and Brian A aboard for a fluke trip today. Ran offshore to a couple of lumps in the 55-70' range, and to start out the steady WSW breeze had us drifting over 1 kt.
First drift was completely crap, just a skate and a big dogfish, then we fished some deeper water to the S and E, with the drift sock in to slow us down, and we immediately picked 3 nice keepers in the 3-4# range, followed by another keeper and a nice chunky seabass. Had a slow pick for 3 drifts in that area.
By 10 the wind completely dropped out, so we lost the drift entirely. Found some alligator blues crushing rainfish just to our south, so after asking the crew if they wanted to kill a few minutes and catch a few gators, they obliged. In 2 short drifts, we put 3 10-12# bluefish in the box, while a few threw the hook near the boat.
Back to fluking... Fished a small wreck, caught nothing but skates, but at 11:30 I ran back to another lump a few miles to the north, and found some fluke willing to bite even though we still had no drift - power drifting put a few in the boat. No more than a half hour later, the South wind started cranking, but with that wind we got a decent pick going of a healthy mix of short fluke, but still a few keepers in the mix.
We wound up with about 30 fluke boated, with 8 making it to the box, as well as 1 nice chunky seabass and the gators we took home for the grill. John had the best fish of the day which was a shade over 5#, and 6 of the 8 keepers were in the 3-5# range. Real nice quality, thick fish. All caught on fresh spearing and regular fluke rigs, but bucktails and chrome balls also caught fish today as well. Decent day, definitely slower than Saturday!
