Headed out on the Sea Hawk on Sunday. Better half decided she didn't want to get out of bed so headed to Perth Amboy on my own. Fairly light crowd, maybe 14 fares.
Wind was a bit more brisk than anticipated and wind against tide made anchoring a bit of a pain. Sat on one anchor at the reef for most of the day making adjustments and small moves. Overall a steady pick of jumbo porgies and some blackfish. Keeper seabass were few and far between.
I started out putting some real nice sized porgies into my cooler and then went to drowning crabs. Switched reels around on some rods and put my Ocea Jigger back on my GUSA tog stick. Didn't switch the leader and paid the price. I had light line on it as I was mostly using it for porgies and of course the first crab I put down to the bottom gets crushed. Hook a nice fish and get it up all the way to just seeing it underwater, dove back down and POP! Leader snapped right at the rig. Was a good fish, easily 7-8lbs and quite possibly bigger from the glimpse and the bend it put in the rod. Talk about disgust, frustration, etc...all I can blame is myself of course
Cut the rest of the leader off and quickly put on 50# leader material. Continued to try for blackfish for most of the day and picked away at some keeper sized ones. Did have one around 4lbs that was just edged out for the pool. Would of had 4 legitimate keepers if the limit was more than the current 1 and a few others I just released without measuring that could have been 14" as well.
Some struggled with fish but most on board put a good amount of jumbo porgies over the rail. Quite a few 1 fish tog limits as well. All in all a nice day on the water and got to catch up with some fellow fishermen that I have not seen in awhile.
Here's a few fish from my cooler I shared with Rob. Mates were already cleaning most of our porgies, but you can see just how big some of these are as the blackfish are 3.5/4lb fish.
