Author Topic: Irish Ayes: Bunker, Bunker Everywhere... 6/04/09 (Read 11291 times)

Bucktail · « **on:** June 04, 2009, 09:09:18 PM »

Captain Joe invited me out today, so I took advantage of the beautiful weather

and headed up to Belmar this morning. Capt Mike and Hareball made up the rest of our crew. The plan was to look for bunker and fish for stripers. Or, if we couldn't find any bunker, to drift for some fluke.

With a light rain and a northeast wind, the ocean was a bit rough as we cleared the inlet this morning making it difficult to spot bunker at first. The seas would eventually calm down and by the end of the day we had almost totally flat seas. Finding the bunker proved to not be as hard as we thought it would be, especially with Capt. "Eagle Eye" Mike on board. In fact, we found pods of bunker almost everywhere we went.

The hardest part of today's fishing was finding a pod that had stripers under them! We live-lined and chunked bunker in quite a few places, but we couldn't buy a bite on them. Out came the trolling rods, to which we attached some bunker spoons, but that didn't work out either. We decided to take a break from that and switch to plan B for a while. So out came the bucktails, fluke rigs, squid, spearing and Gulp! and we did some bottom fishing.

There was life on the bottom as we picked up some short fluke and sea bass. Hareball managed to catch a legal fluke while Capt. Joe landed a nice keeper sea bass.

After doing the flukie thing for awhile, we decided to chase the bunkies some more. Again, we had bunker all over, but we just couldn't get bit.

I had been throwing a Bob Hahn swimmer (which I won at last year's NJSWF party) when I saw something swirl on it. Some hope! I cast again and BAM! something ate it. After a tough fight and a couple of attempts to go under the boat, Mike was able to sink the gaff into an almost 30 lb. striper.

A few minutes later, lightning struck again on the same plug! This one was bigger than the first, but Mike was soon able to gaff this one as well. I was pumped when I put her on the scale. That's because my previous personal best had been 29 1/2 lbs. for many years. This one was 32! Not huge for a lot of you. But for a chucker like myself, it feels great to finally hit the 30 lb. mark!

Anyway, we stayed with this pod of bunker and made a few more drifts through them, but to no avail. Other than some cocktail blues, those two bites were the only ones we could manage today. We even tried going on the troll again, but another fish just wasn't in the cards for us.

Live-lining, chunking, trolling, jigging and plugging. We certainly worked (played) hard for them today. Thanks to Captain Joe for having me out today and for helping me catch my p.b. It was also great to get out fishing with Mike and Bob (Hareball) again today. It was definitely a fun time!

striperdad · « **Reply #1 on:** June 04, 2009, 09:17:35 PM »

Nice fish. Feels good to catch the big ones. Doesn't it.

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Author Topic: Irish Ayes: Bunker, Bunker Everywhere... 6/04/09 (Read 11291 times)