Had Dave Eichen and hsi son Dave aboard as well as "Dubya" Push for a mixed bag trip.
Ran north to start. With the crisp NW wind and bluebird skies we could see birds working from Spring Lake up to Avon or so, so we started on some incredibly concentrations (sky almost BLACK with birds) working them off Lake Como, great start already!! But, the shoe dropped shortly thereafter... Got the jigs in, nothing. Repositioned, worked different areas, nothing. Dave Jr. had a tiny biteoff on a storm shad, and lo and behold we found that snapper-sized and taylor blues were working the area; pretty much pushing rainfish and peanuts right up to the top, nothing bigger than maybe a foot long.
Continued to run north to find more life, found nothing but super-brown water and more of the same all the way up into Long Branch. That was the end of our jigging trip...
Ran back south, set up on the troll w/ Clark Spoons for bonito/albies from Asbury down to Spring Lake, not even a knockdown. Back off Spring Lake we found some solid marks on the bottom, and put on weakfish rigs w/ squid strips and caught a grand total of 1 nice weakie taken by Dave. Nada thereafter.
Set up on the troll again to the S of the inlet, working from Bay Head down into Normandy. We did have some knockdowns this time around, but from taylor sized blues working more of the same kind of bait that we had earlier in the day. Water was MUCH clearer to the S.
We then made another switch, this time to bottom fishing on some shell bottom as well as on a couple of wrecks. Inshore, on the shells, we took a few nice fluke, all of which would have been keepers up to 19" - tough to toss them back, no croakers or weakfish. We then ran out to the AC Reef, and despite the 4-6' steep chop, we put several nice seabass in the box with the best one being taken by Dave Jr of about 3#.
Called it a day at 2 after covering nearly forty miles, after another shot at trolling produced a goose egg. Real tough day!! Of course Dave, Dave, and George were troopers, as always a great crew!
