Had Mike Accordino, Steve Magyari, Sandro, and Charlie Goodman aboard for a jig-troll trip.
Started out running south. Found some life off Normandy/Chadwick, under pretty decent birdplay, picked a short in the mix. As we turned and headed a bit north, gannets started dive bombing all around us, with some of the most intense birdplay we've seen this fall, but everything was moving to the N at a pretty good clip. When we got to them, we tossed AVA's into the foray, and picked up some cocktail blues, and one nice 29" bass by Mike.
After trolling 60-70' depths for about an hour with more shorts and cocktail blues, we went north looking for more jigging action, and we worked an area of sandeels, some birds, about 2 miles E of the inlet. Picked a few more shorts, another keeper by Mike, and some bluefish here on butterflies.
Got a call of some serious birdlife again in on the beach, and headed in to the Sea Girt/Spring Lake area and found just that. N fringes of the birds had a few short bass, the rest was all the cocktail blues you could handle in the 4-7# range. We followed this patch down into point again to finish up the day.
Wound up with maybe a dozen bass, only 2 keepers at 29" and 30", and easily 50 + bluefish all in the 4-10# range. Good day!