Had Tom DiGregorio and his son Tom Jr. charter the boat today for a 1/2 day, river/bay light tackle fluke trip. For the whole day, we fished ultra light rods with 6# line and light mai tai bucktails tipped w/ a killie fished below a gulp teaser, the later just the gulp on plain jig heads. The father and son team had a little numbers contest on who could boat more fish by trip's end.
Ran straight to the N end of Barnegat Bay to start off. Started out working the channel edges, just a few shorts. Then moved to the flats a little further south and we started getting some shorts. As the incoming slowed, the fishing picked up and we had pretty much constant action before retreating to the river to look for bigger fish.
In the river, it was more shorts at the top of the tide and start of outgoing, so we ran back to the bay to catch the change of tide. This time, the fluke were all over the jigs, hitting them sometimes before they even hit bottom, chasing them to the top, etc. The bottom was paved with fluke, and they were very willing to bite and bite aggressively...
Only problem was the majority of the fluke were in the 14-16" range, but were real gamers on this ultra light tackle. I'd say 50% of the fluke we caught were spitting up multiple 1-3" winter flounder, as well as 2" spearing.
At trip's end, Tom Jr. had 43 fluke, Tom had 37, and I snuck in another 10. Out of the 90 fluke boated, only 1 was a keeper @ 18". Great action for just a few hours fishing, these guys had a blast!!!
