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Had John E, Brandon, George, Cool Hand Al, and Darren S aboard for a FTYP trip today.
Ran north again. Started out offshore fishing some rough stuff and high spots only to put a few shorts and seabass in the boat. We had a real nice drift, creeping along at .4 or so, so we had the conditions, fish just weren't there or weren't biting.
Around 9 after Jerry told me they were picking some keepers not too far from us so we ran in there. First couple of drifts we picked up some seabass, then we found a nice patch of fluke and put a couple in the boat. We then made a little shift, and got a good crack at them for about 3 drifts and then the S wind came on VERY quick. We stuck it out for a few more drifts, but it got entirely too fast so we headed further inshore to make a couple of drops off Long Branch, and picked at shorts.
By 2PM, the S wind was screaming, we had a steady 20 kts -- so we started for home and worked our way back at 12-13 kts.
Tough day for us, just wasn't our day. If we had started where had caught them we would have a real nice mess of fish in the box. Al had the top fluke of 5.2#, and we had a few nice seabass in the mix. Wound up with a total of 8 in the box --- not a total loss by any means but it was TOUGH fishing.