Had Bill P, Bill H, Brian, and Rob aboard for a FTYP trip. Ran north, beautiful ocean again with a NW breeze. Got up to the spot in 40 minutes and had a very slow pick to start. Moved inshore, and found a lot more life at the same area we had the 30+ keeper days a couple of weeks ago - just today we had 1 keeper there.
Made a move back out to a high rocky spot and had one real good drift where we bagged a load of shorts, a few nice keepers plus a few nice seabass. When we went up for our second drift, we lost the breeze, and conditions deteriorated quickly. We went from 1.2 or so to .2 in a matter of no time and even though we were catching, we had mostly shorts.
Made a few moves working further off the beach out to the deep, but only had a few more shorts, a seabass here and there and a ling. By 1PM the south wind started so we went back to where we had them earlier since we had some movement, but we came up with just a couple of bites.
We then worked our way south, and fished a lump off LB for a couple of shorts, then got a call from a buddy (my flounder sharpie Shelby!) who had a few in closer. This move pretty much saved the day as we had a good pick of shorts with a handful more keepers thrown in. Stayed out an extra 45 minutes to give the guys a good crack at a few more keepers.
We easily boated close to 100 fluke today, with probably 30% of the shorts being 17.25-17.9999" - which was unbelievable. We did scratch out 8 keepers, and had a few nice seabass and a ling for the box. There was an alarming amount of near misses today, more then I can ever remember. Also, a lot of spots that usually hold bigger fish are inundated with shorts, some as small as 8"
Overall a good day with great company, Bill H had the biggest fish of just about 3# and 20". No reports till Monday - hope everyone has a great weekend
