My son Jason & I were invited our friend's Jeff's boat out of Brown's Point Marina along with another friend Larry. With a fog bank to the east, we decided to start off in the Triangle. I started (fished the whole day with this rig) with my standard bucktail rig consisting of a 1.5 ounce white Spro with a 2/0 standout hook 10"s above. Best combination was to tip the Spro with a 4" GULP new penny shrimp and the stand out hook with a 3" version. The others opted to mainly drag bait. Had the end of the outgoing tide with a light west wind. Picked a few fish each with Jason boxing the only keeper. As the sun got higher the fog started to burn off and we moved east with our original destination the ammo pier. We stopped short of the ammo pier just east of buoy #10 in the Reach. Started off mid channel but with slack tide and light wind we covered very little ground. What ground we did cover moved us south to north. Once we got outside the 20 yards outside the channel we had some bites. Repeated this for the next few hours as the incoming tide was s slow to develop. Jason had boxed our second keeper when I had a solid hook up and brought a 24" fluke to the boat that was hooked on the stand out hook but as it was about to be netter to made a dive causing the Spro to become tangling in the net..before we could get the second net the fish threw the hook and swam away
. Not soon after I had another definite keeper boatside and once again it was lost as it was about to be netted
. Not 15 minutes later, Jason is into a good fish. As I went to net it, the leader broke
. So 3 quality fish lost in 30 minute time span wasn't a good feeling. We continued to pick and plunk fish-mostly shorts but Jason added 2 more keepers and I had 2. Once the incoming tide developed, the wind picked up from the southeast and at first gave us a nice drift along the flats adjacent to the channel and we picked fish along the way. Only a few other boats did the same drift with the rest drifting mid channel and not catching anything. Even though they saw us catching they never n made the move
. The wind eventually started blowing 20 and the drift became too fast. Made 2 drifts on the Keansburg flats and one in the Keyport with each drift yielding 1 short. ended the day with just the 6 keepers that Jason & I combined for. Lots of 17.5" to just shy of 18" fish out there.
