Had Jeff Samuels, his son Andrew, Jeff's brother Chris, and their nephew Pete aboard today. Andrew was the lucky winner of a $100 Reel Class gift cert at the NJFishing.com Christmas party this past December - congrats on that again!
With a nasty ocean, a cranking NNE wind of 15-20 kts gusting to near 25 and a small craft, I gave the guys the option of splitting the day between worming for weakfish in Barnegat Bay, then spending the other half of the trip fluking in the river, and we did just that.
We left the slip at around 6, ran through the canal, and to the S of the Mantoloking Bridge, fishing between there and Curtis Point. We had a slow pick of small seabass in the 7-10" range, but we did boat 2 weakfish both around 15".
After working the area for about 40 minutes or so, we moved a bit north to a big dug out hole to the N of the bridge, and drifted that area. We proceeded to get a nice pick going of a real smorgasbord of late summer bay-dwellers: kingfish, blowfish, short seabass, short fluke and (1) 2# dinner plate sized porgy taken by Chris. We had some fantastic light tackle action in there until the tide started moving.
At around 11 we made the move back to the river, and drifted between the 35 bridge and Clark's, and had a nasty wind against tide to start, but once the tide slackened we got a nice pick going of mixed size fluke, boating ~20 fish, topped by a nice 20" fish. All fluke were taken on live killies with chartreuse teasers.
At day's end we wound up with about a half dozen kingfish, a half dozen or so BIG blowfish, 2 weakfish, the 1 jumbo porgy, and 4 nice keeper fluke in the box. To say the least Jeff, Pete, Andrew, and Chris were a GREAT crew, and the comic relief from all involved was a real treat. A real good light tackle trip in the river and bay!
