The sea bass fishing is clearly the best fishery right now. We had lots of action this past open boat with sea bass leading the way by far. We fished the GS South Reef and had near perfect conditions all morning and into the early afternoon. The water was a nice bluish green and the clarity was very good with temperatures around 70 degrees. A nice light easterly breeze kept the drift at a perfect pace. The only issue was that the sea bass were mostly all about a 1/2 inch short. We must have caught around 30-40 bass with only a few for the dinner table. It was still a blast with several double headers.
The winds and seas kicked up around 1:00 so we decided to head towards home and make a couple of drifts by the OPT research buoys. Good thing because we managed to put our first keeper fluke in the box with one short. It was a great crew and we listened to the Grateful Dead channel all day on Sirius radio #32. The fluke season should be breaking open soon as the water temperatures remain in the 70's.
I will not be running any charters this week nor the Saturday Open Boat because I will be fishing the Beach Haven White Marlin Invitational which runs Thursday -Saturday. I will let everyone know how I do next week.