If there was anytime to be out there it's right now. T-bone, his brother-in-law Donnie and his father big Don rounded out the crew. We launched yesterday AM just after daybreak with a half bushel of clams and half again of green crabs, squid, Gulp, you name it. Target.... Seabass, Porgies, and TOG.
Clean flat seas made for easy going. A fair number of surf casters on the beach working the false hook area and some with flyrods. A quick look and we stuck to the game plan. First stop SCOTLAND. No traffic. Outgoing tide and West/So West. Dropped the hook just off the structure. Pulled a few short seabass. Repositioned two times but couldn't maintain cover on this section of real estate. Getting a little frustrated, pulled anchor and moved.
Next stop. Mud Buoy. Elected not to anchor and drifted in nice conditions to pull two fluke one legit size (man that hurts) another just short. Both returned for next season. The C80 was on fire. We had consistent action on porgies and sea bass for the next two and half hours. The ratio of throw back to keep was close to 20:1 on the seabass and closer to 10:1 on the porgies. No real knuckleheads to account for but the seabass we kept were very respectable fish.
Around 12:30 we broke from the action. Had a Tastee sub (thanks Donnie... those suckers still rock)! Motored to the SH reef were the fleet was concentrated. Some of the spots that have produced in the past were picked over pretty clean.
Verified some numbers and got out of dodge. Spotted bird action along the beach in 15ft of water. The rain fish was so thick (3-5 ft)at about 5-9 ft in the water column. I haven't seen the likes of this in a while. The school of bait went on what seemed for ever. The guys through metal, plastic with nothing to report other than a chomped off tail on soft plastic shad. Yellow eyes! Played for a few and then moved to our last destination.
Dropped the hook with the nose into the S swells. Spot on the mark. The screen was lit up as we hung right over the wreck. Double and triple headers on every drop. A lone seagull knew the location too. He stuck around to get feed live Bergalls just about out of the hand. I should have had a picture of this guy!
Although green crabs produced a decent catch of fish, fresh clam strips were the ticket. Big Don was a clam shell smashin fool and it paid off in spades. We finally got the TOG to bite along with a couple of other surprise species for the day. Aside from the countless hookups on Seabass, Porgies and short TOG. We ended up boxing a two keeper TOG, a COD, Trigger fish (very cool looking and I understand delicious), a dozen seabass and don't know the count on Porgies. Trigger fish Donnie was hot hand overall with T-bone closing the gap late in the day with the touch for TOG finishing out with the COD.
Great day with some real good anglers! It doesn't get much better than that.... Get out there and hit the bottom until the stripers show up in mass.
A couple of pics attached.
