The weather was kind to us this weekend and so was the fishing.  The catch of the weekend was a 24" 5.02lb fluke which was caught on the Garden State South Reef.  We thought we were snagged on the bottom until it started tugging back.  I would not say that the catching was easy, however, if you put time in you were most likely rewarded.

 

I saw an amazing occurrence this weekend.  We were snagging bunker off Brant Beach in search of some trophy striped bass when out of the corner of my eye I saw several gulls on top of the water behaving abnormally.  I decided to move the boat a little closer to have a look when I saw a large mass of bunker piling on top of one another in an odd fashion.  They were not splashing around as they normally do, just climbing on top of one another trying to obviously get away from something underneath.  I thought it was my lucky day and went to reach for my rod with the weighted treble hook.  Just then, about twenty bunker came shooting out of the water and were followed by a huge Thresher Shark.  It slapped it's tail on top of the water a couple of times and slowly vanished beneath the surface.  It was frightening and amazing at the same time to see this predator so close up but what was even more frightening was that it occurred only a couple of hundred yards off the beach.  Swimmers beware!

 

Fished the LE Reef on Saturday with Tom Mulvanney from the State Police.  There has been some excellent fluke fishing in the bay but we decided to head off to the reef sites and see if we could stir up some action since the water temperature had increased sharply in the last week.  Sure enough, the fluke and sea bass were were waiting for us and we managed to put some nice size keeper fluke and sea bass in the box with many throw backs. 

 

On Father's Day Sunday I had the Dixon group down from Forked River.  Tom Dixon's wife treated the group to a nice Father's Day gift.  The weather wasn't so nice to us on this day.  We had showers off and on and there was no drift due to the lack of wind.  The seas were dead calm which is nice for cruising but not so nice for fishing.  We managed to put some keepers in the box and they were able to get enough fish for a Father's Day dinner.  Thrill of the day was a large Spiny Dogfish who managed to whip me with his horn while I was holding him up for photos.  Serves me right!

 

 

Striper fishing in the LBI area has been spotty.  Some fisherman are finding large bass under the bunker schools along the beach and others are coming home empty handed.  I have not had a chance in the past week to get out and give it a shot.  Fishing the bunker schools is very fun and exciting.  Last summer I pulled a couple of small mako sharks out of a bunker school about six miles off the beach.  The bunker are such an important food source for predatory fish.  I am glad to see that the restrictions on the netters in the Chesapeake area are working.

I will be running open boat charters beginning in July this year on Fridays and Saturdays.  The price of fuel has made all of the boats raise their prices which is leading to less bookings among the industry.  I am personally not seeing this in my bookings but this could be due to the fact that everybody wants to fish on the new boat.  I feel this is a good way for small groups to get out on the water and not have to spend the money for the whole boat.  I am fortunate that my new boat is not a gas hog so I have only raised my prices modestly.