First weekend fluking this season, and had mixed results. Reports are below.
6/11 JCAA Fluke Tournament: Mike Reynolds (Sharkyispy) from the board and I got a crew together for today's JCAA tournament a few months ago. The crew consisted of Larry H, Scott A, Ryan H, Pete P, and Fred M. Broke the inlet @ 615 and found a steady E breeze of 15 kts and honest 3-4' seas close together. We slugged our way north and started off off Deal, and found no life in the deep. Worked inshore, and found a few shorts in 40', then ventured further N to the snags off Elberon and LB.
Found a steady pick of fluke in the rocks mostly on bucktails with strips and gulp teasers - even w/ the wind our drift was "ok" at 1 kt. Lots of bites, lots of action, and keepers mixed in w/ the many shorts we took. We jockeyed around the shallow stuff, then went into the deep and continued to pick. By around 10 we had several keepers in the box, so we were off to look for that "big" fish that could get us the port prize in PP.
Shortly after that, the bite we had died completely - the fish we were pulling up all morning were warm, but after that point the fluke we boated were ICE COLD. The one thing that "changed" was the wind kicked up a notch when the bite stopped, and the ocean got flat-out sloppy w/ some 6's thrown in w/ the 3's and 4's.
We then worked the deep rocks, some ridges/hills, mussel beds, and just couldn't find that one fish. By 1PM we worked our way back towards home, and hit a few high spots, only to find more shorts - we even ventured out to some snags E of our inlet, and picked away slowly again and got our biggest fish of the day taken by Ryan.
We wound up with 10 keepers (thought we had more) to 22". The guys were fantastic and fished hard all day in the nasty ocean, and Mike did a great job setting up the trip and getting the group together. Thanks Mike!!
6/12: Quick report for today... Had John Kuhles charter on for his second straight Sunday trip. After last Sunday's bass massacre w/ John and crew it was gonna be tough to top that today. The crew decided to fluke fish - so we went north. Much nicer conditions today with 2-4' seas and a groundswell from the NE. Got up north, and set up where we had the "good" bite yesterday morning in about 55' off LB. Lines got in, and they took off - ROARING current out of the N coupled with the brisk early morning NNW wind put our drift at 2.9 to 3.7 kts on the GPS!! After 5 mins. we got the heck outta there.
Ran in on the beach, and had to fish in real tight where we could keep the drift under 1.5, and we had a slow pick for a couple of hours of short fluke mixed in with a few of keepers here and there. Once that NNW laid down, we tried off the beach again, but the current was still wicked so we finished our fluking on the inside with a couple more. Switched over to seabassin and made some drops closer to home, again to find that crazy current where the guys had to put 10 oz. on to stay vertical across the transom. Again, slow pick, a good amount of short bass and some that were close. Lots of bergall life on the pieces as well.
Checked out the bunker pods on the ride in - NG!
Tough day for us, we need that NW wind again!
