After seeing Eddie Hunter 2 and Warren WB and shooting the breeze for a bit, my niece and her boyfriend finally made it around 6 and we pushed off. Hadn't seen my niece in 8 years back when she was just a tiny 13 year old so it was nice to catch up and her boyfriend was a genuinely great guy.
For the fishing, I brought the squid, gulps, spearing, and bunker and headed out towards Orchard. Tried to get a troll going but it was just plain sloppy out there and I didn't want to put them through hell since this was their first boat trip. Headed inland to the Keansburg hole. Drift was real fast and tough to stay on it. They were tossing spoons to no avail and I had one small shake on the bucktail before it broke loose. Headed back to closer grounds to a spot I got a tip on for decent fluking and where I KNOW bluefish are roaming. Dropped the bucktail again while they were tossing spoons and her boyfriend hooked up with a really nice Bluefish. The my niece hooked up with a smaller one so I switched the fluke rig out for a bunker rig. Before we knew it lines were burning out everywhere and we turned over to bunker on all lines. I put my time in hardcore as captain as fish were flying, including one that literally lept out of the water over my transom and in the boat. In my mind I was disappointed that we weren't on Stripers or Fluke, but then again they were having so much fun and we were having a great time reconnecting, so it was a great night indeed. Also apparently her boyfriend's mother is a top notch soul food chef and can work wonders with bluefish, so they went home with quite a bit of meat.