Had the Jim Hart charter onboard today consisting of Jim, Bruce and his son Brandon, and their buddy Joe - Joey A filled in the last spot as Jim had an angler drop out last night.
Ran south to where we caught them yesterday. A close tight chop from the south with an occasional close 3-4' swell made it a little lumpy going south. First drop on some great marks yielded an almost instand just under 28" bass, followed by a couple of doggies. Ran around the same area we caught yesterday, and found loads of great readings, but nothing biting outside of dogfish and the occasional bluefish.
Decided to run back north, and joined the fleet that was working a wide area from Lavalette up to Mantoloking about 1.5 miles off. No birds, but more great readings, only thing was these fish were biting. Mostly bluefish, but an occasional bass to spice up the action. If you left the jigs on the bottom, it was spiny city. Every drift we picked several bluefish, and had a couple real good shots at bass.
Once the wind started SCREAMING from the west we had a hard time working the area, but still continued to pick. By around 2 we ran in on the beach for a look - found nothing. We did find some birds working right outside our inlet - more jumbo bluefish.
Overall we had a slow but steady pick all day long, with the slowest action early in the morning. We wound up with ~40-50 bluefish, as well as 7 keeper bass to 15#; we also had a handful of short bass, and a LOAD of spiny dogfish. Joey also jigged up a 13" tog on a 67! Great crew today, Joey is always a pleasure on the boat and he was ON FIRE today w/ the bass; Brandon also nailed a nice keeper at the end of the day. Thanks for coming down today guys!!
