Had Doc and Jason Sokol, Scott Hill, and Greg aboard for a fluke trip today. Knowing the heave from the weekend storm had laid down I toyed with the idea of going outside, but after hearing some boats went fishless yesterday afternoon I told the guys to bring the ultralight rods and spinning reels and we'd fish the river some rod bending action. When I spoke to Jerry of the Monger, as well as Al, Joe & Tom and a few other guys they told me the action outside was dreadful, my mind was made up to stay in the river. As always, thanks for the intel guys
We Fished pretty much the same stretch of water all day long from in front of my marina to the 35 bridge, and had CONSTANT action. We had at least 1 fish on all day long, if not 2-3, sometimes 4, or even 5 when I joined the action. It was STUPID fishing.
Problem was, the fish fell into roughly three size ranges. 6-10", 13-16", and >17". The majority of the fish were in the middle size range, with lots of 15-16" fish making up the majority of the catch, with plenty of palm sized postage stamps and see-through micro fluke coming to the boat as well.
The only time we didn't catch fluke was when we tried to catch a schoolie bass or two off the bridges with soft plastics at the top of the tide - no shakes on that one. Once we went back to fluking, the action again remained the same.
We had a little friendly wager going on on the boat today of who could catch the most fluke all day long, and we were also trying to best the boat record of fluke caught on a given day. At day's end, the individual catch was: Doc - 102 fluke, Greg - 75 fluke, Jason - 65 fluke, Scott - 48 fluke, and me with 25 fluke. We also had a couple of small seabass, a blowfish, and a few snapper blues. At day's end, if I did my math right, we boated an astouding 315 fluke.
Through all the action, we were able to boat 3 keepers: 1@18", 1@19", and 1@21", 2 of them belonged to Greg. The action was fantastic, and on the light tackle these fish were a great adversary. Not meat fishing by any standard, but a great day for action fishing -- these guys had a blast and had a great day on the water.
