Had our second FTYP marathon trip today. Left the dock just after 630 with Cool hand Al, Bill P, Ryan H, Lenny, Chuck, and Fred. Again ran north. Lots of life out there this morning as some terns were working over some small bluefish on the ride up.
Cool temps, a brisk NNW breeze of around 10 kts made for good drifting conditions early. Started in close off Deal, just a few shorts, then went off, and got more shorts. In close, the water was FILTHY however once we got off the beach, the water cleaned up however the N current picked up quite a bit and we were drifting at over 2 kts. We finally found some fish on a hill/clam bed and had a slow pick of mostly short fluke and a few seabass.
After a few drifts, that dried up, so we tried another high spot - nada. Did one drift in on the rocks in 40' of water, and had a painfully slow pick of smaller seabass. Even though there was less current, there were less bites.
So we then went further north and finally found a few keeper fluke, a few more keeper seabass. Once we got up that way we had good drifting conditions, and we started catching, but as soon as the bite picked up, the drift died, and power drifting yielded just a handful of bites.
Headed for home at 330 with 6-7 keeper fluke and about a dozen keeper seabass (I didn't get an exact count today - SORRY). We had maybe 2 dozen short fluke, and a bunch of short seabass. Overall it was a slow pick at best all day long, but everyone went home with a nice bag of fillets. Great crew, I will be seeing most of them later this summer for another shot at the flatties.
Oh, and kudos to my deckhand Kenny who got us off to a great start this morning by putting a keeper in the box before I even started the engines LOL thanks Ken!!
