Had regular Tom Kreibel charter the boat today for his buddy Dennis' retirement gift. Aboard with Tom and Dennis were George, Clayton, Dave, and Kenny. The plan was to mix it up with seabass-cod-ling then finish the day fluking.
A few quick drops in 65-85' produced short seabass and a handful of keepers. No ling or cod.
We made our way out to 100-120' depths and we had better action with a mix of cod and seabass, but still no ling. Cod were mixed in size from shorts to barely keepers (biggest 22"), and seabass were from shorts up to a few nice 1.5-2# ers as well as one jumbo sea raven. I was able to get on the bow and drop a jig down for the cod - I was able to hook 8, boated 4 - a simple AVA 67 w/ a green tail did the trick; I dropped one that I got a few cranks off that wouldn't budge!! ... Can't believe I was jigging cod in NJ in July! By 11 we ran back inshore for a shot at some fluke.
Back inshore by 1145 we finished up the day fluking S of our inlet on some rough spots in 65-80'. Fair action with the fluke on a few spots, while others produced more fish. Also had more seabass mixed in. I think we pulled 7 keepers up to almost 5# - Tom I believe was HH with 3-4 keepers and also had a double header cod/seabass.
Overall another good day with a nice mixed bag - beat the T-storms and had some fish for the box. We wound up with the 7 keeper fluke, roughly a dozen seabass, and the codfish as well as the raven as well as a handful of cocktail blues. It was great having Tom and his boys aboard!!
