Fishing in the Beach Haven area is at it's best.  Our recent reef trips over the last couple of weeks have produced many fluke over the 20" mark and several over 25" and 7lbs.

 

The tighter restrictions on the fluke seem unfair to most of us fisherman.  Especially when most of the fluke we are catching seem to be 16.5 to 16.75 inches.  The bright side of the regulations is that we are seeing extremely large fluke.  These fluke are historic in size. 

 

Just last week, Monica Oswald of Neptune NJ was fishing the Shrewsberry Rocks, which is about 35 miles north of the reef areas we fish, and landed a world record fluke.  It weighed in at 24lbs.  She thought she was hooked on the bottom of the ocean.  The Shrewsberry Rocks also happens to be my favorite fishing spot in the fall for striped bass.  This is the area I fish in the fall when I move my boat noth to Sandy Hook.  It is a rocky area about 1.5 miles off the beach in about 40ft of water.  The rocky bottom holds the bait fish and acts very similair to the artificial reefs we fish.  Most important is that the commercial draggers can't fish these areas for fear they will ruin their gear.

 

If the conditions are right, it has not been unusual for us to go out and catch fluke in the 3-5lb range every trip.  If there are world record fluke just 35 miles to our north than it might just be a matter of time before the next record fluke is caught in the Beach Haven area.  I would not be surprised.  This is a direct result of the tighter restrictions.

The recent nor'easter blew in some real tropical gulf stream water and the fishing has really turned on.  The ocean temperatures this past week were in the mid to upper 70's and the water was emerald blue.  Tuesday, July 31st was our best trip of the year with 12 keeper fluke and about a dozen throw backs.  We even had a nice catch of sea bass.  A few were in the 3-4lb range.

 

The key to good reef and bottom is speed of drift.  Our Thursday group had slow fishing in the early morning and the drift was real slow.  Once the breeze picked up we started landing bass and fluke.

 

The breeze that picked up on Thursday afternoon kept blowing through the night and by Friday morning we were greeted with 3-4 ft seas which quickly turned into 4-6ft.  It got real sloppy and we decided to cut the trip short.  We did manage to put a dolphin fish in the boat which is pretty rare for the reef areas.  Usually they hang around the lobster pot buoys about 15 miles offshore.  There presence is a result of the tropical water which we are enjoying.