Had the Dr. Michael Goldberg of Piscataway, NJ party out yesterday for a day of Fluke fishing, which actually started out as a Striper trip. After scouring the ocean from the tip of Sandy Hook down to the Highlands Bridge and couldn't connect with any bunker, my anglers indicated that they were getting itchy to start fishing. After a few phone calls to a few of my charter friends that Striper fishing and bunker pods in the Monmouth county ocean was slow, we all decided to make this trip a Fluke fishing trip.
Started drifting for Fluke on the ocean side, and caught fishing on our first drift......not bad I thought. I have some really good rough bottom locations on my GPS, so it was nice that we didn't have to travel far once out on the ocean side. After racking over this one area, it was time to move on to another spot. That spot proved to be a dogfish heaven........oh brother, double headers of dogfish.........what a pain in the a**.
Now it was off to another spot which was the green side of Sandy Hook Channel only to find slim pickings there and a very fast current. So it was back to an area at Flynns Knoll which I did pretty well on Wednesday. Although the water temps at Flynns recorded at a high of 69, the fish were still hitting very lethargically and you had to have a really good feel for a hookup. Not easy fishing for the inexperienced angler of fluke. Our best bait of the day was hands down the Peruvian Smelt once again. Sometimes, just a Smelt without a aquid strip did well too. We did also hook a bunker on a suicide mission and used his fillet strips for bait which had immediate hits......amazing how the poor little bunker is liked by everything that swims.
Bunker strips, bluefish strips, sea robin strips....catch them and use them, they work!
All in all, I had to say it was a slow day of fluke fishing today. We had many shorts and not enough keepers to satisfy me. One big problem for the early morning fishing was our incoming tide. I don't like incoming tide for fluking. I'm sure if we would have been able to wait out the change in tide in the Flynns Knoll area, we would have done much better. It may also be time for me to make some exploratory fishing over at Ambrose Channel for the bigger fish. Tight lines for now.
Capt. John
