I will be fishing in the White Marlin Invitational this Thursday, Friday, & Saturday.  We actually fish two of the three days.  It is our choice which days we will pick.  The weather looks good and I have my crew in place.  It should be a lot of fun.  There are 100 boats of all sizes entered in the tournament.  I will be going up against some big boats with professional crews.  This tournament has become very large over the last several years and is now considered to be a part of the professional fishing circuit.

Regulator and Comstock Yacht Sales has sponsored me to be in the tournament and my new 29' Regulator will be on display at the club on Saturday night for all to see and take a tour.

The sea conditions this July will not go down in history as the best July to swim or fish in the ocean.  The water has been very cold due to a steady south west wind which has blown for a good part of the summer.  We had a few days a week ago when the wind came out of the north and gave us a glimmer of hope as water temperatures rose in the 70's.  Less then a week later, the persistent west wind returned and blew the warm surface water away from the beach and created an upwelling of green bottom water.  This has created dense fog and slow fishing.  Here are my reports from the past several days:

7/18  Fished the Garden State South Reef with Ed Lawson and crew and found surface temps in the low 60's.  We did manage to put a few keeper fluke in the cooler but had to work hard for them.  The catch of the day was a 6.22lb tog which was caught while drifting using a fluke rig baited with squid and spearing.

7/19  Ran offshore to the Lemke's Canyon in search of blue-fin tuna.  Found thick fog for the first 30 miles and I was glued to the radar for most of the trip.  Shortly after we left the fog bank the wind kicked up to a steady 20knots and the seas grew to an uncomfortable 4-6 ft.  We decided to call it an early day and picked up around 12:30 after going for a long boat ride.

7/20

Found thick fog again in the morning so we decided to stay in the bay and flounder fish in the clam stakes on the Mystic Island side of the fish factory.  We had steady action of short fluke and I can say that most of the boats around us did as well.  The throwback to keeper ration was around 12 to 1.  Gulp minnows on a jig head seemed to do the trick.

7/22

Ran outside again to the garden State South Reef.  The conditions wee beautiful with a slight breeze and a perfect drift.  The water temps had risen to around 65 degrees.  We boated many fluke today which was a nice surprise and added several blue humpback black sea bass to the tally.  We were the only boat on the GSS today which was nice but a little eerie.

We had some beautiful weather this past weekend.  The only problem was that the reef fishing was a little slow.  The largest fluke of the weekend was 19.5 inches caught on Saturday.  We had little drift and there was no wind to move the boat.  The water temperatures finally began to rise and we should start to see a good fluke bite starting very soon.  The bay fishing has been outstanding, however, you have to pick through about 15-20 fluke to get one keeper.  Then there are the green heads which you have to contend with on a daily basis.  I would rather fish in the ocean where your chances are better at getting keepers even though the action is not as steady.

This weekend I will be fishing offshore for the first time this season.  I am in a local fishing tournament for marlin, tuna, wahoo, and dolhin.  There has been an excellent tuna bite sofar this season and I hope I can find the fish.