7/9: Had the Tom Rizzo charter on today for a mixed bag bluefish-bottom-fluke trip...Started out chasing the taylor blues just outside our inlet and jigged up about a dozen with 1 double header coming by Heather. After we finished up w that we headed south to do some bottom fishing. A lot of nice chunk 2-3# ling and a few seabass were in the mix.
Next it was onto fluking to finish up the day. Made 2 drops on the deep rocks and 2 in on the beach. Both produced a slow pick, but we were able to pick 4 keepers out of the shorts. Frank dropped a nice 4-5 # fish just before it got to the net. Overall a good day action wise - we wound up with around 25 ling, a few seabass, a dozen small blues and the keeper fluke. Great crew - they will be back this fall to chase the gators and albies.
7/8: FTYP trip today with Limestone Larry, Jon, Chris"OD", Rob, Fred and PA Pete... Decided to stay closer to home with the bad weather on its way and we had a solid day... Fished some rockpiles and wreck edges S of our inlet and had a slow but steady pick of short fluke and seabass, a healthy mix of keepers and ling on the bucktails and teasers.
It was an all day grind but by the end of the day we boxed 12 keeper fluke to just under 5#, 16 ling, and 6 seabass. Larry took the big fish @ 4.85 #, and Fred was HH w 5 keepers. Great crew, lots of laughs and chop busting all day long- rain held off till we got back to the dock! Thanks for coming down guys!!
7/7: Had regular Tom Kreibel charter the boat today for his buddy Dennis' retirement gift. Aboard with Tom and Dennis were George, Clayton, Dave, and Kenny. The plan was to mix it up with seabass-cod-ling then finish the day fluking.
A few quick drops in 65-85' produced short seabass and a handful of keepers. No ling or cod.
We made our way out to 100-120' depths and we had better action with a mix of cod and seabass, but still no ling. Cod were mixed in size from shorts to barely keepers (biggest 22"), and seabass were from shorts up to a few nice 1.5-2# ers as well as one jumbo sea raven. I was able to get on the bow and drop a jig down for the cod - I was able to hook 8, boated 4 - a simple AVA 67 w/ a green tail did the trick; I dropped one that I got a few cranks off that wouldn't budge!! ... Can't believe I was jigging cod in NJ in July! By 11 we ran back inshore for a shot at some fluke.
Back inshore by 1145 we finished up the day fluking S of our inlet on some rough spots in 65-80'. Fair action with the fluke on a few spots, while others produced more fish. Also had more seabass mixed in. I think we pulled 7 keepers up to almost 5# - Tom I believe was HH with 3-4 keepers and also had a double header cod/seabass.
Overall another good day with a nice mixed bag - beat the T-storms and had some fish for the box. We wound up with the 7 keeper fluke, roughly a dozen seabass, and the codfish as well as the raven as well as a handful of cocktail blues. It was great having Tom and his boys aboard!!
