Saturday's fishing trip started early, 5:30 AM.  I wanted to give it our best shot at putting striper in the boat.  We headed towards Brigantine and trolled wreck inlet for about an hour.  The conditions were fantastic but the fish were not there.  I decided to move off a few miles and search for some bunker pods.  I did not have to travel too far before I was surrounded by acres of bunker.  I snagged a bunch of adult size bunker and transfered them into the live well.  After I filled the live well with bunker, I moved the towards off shore bars of Little Egg Inlet.  I rigged a couple of bunker slow trolled through the white water.  There were two other boats close by to me fishing in a similar manner.  I observed the first boat to my starboard get a knockdown and seconds later the boat to my starboard bow had a fish on.  Almost instantly, my large Star rod doubled over and the line was screaming of my reel.  FINALLY!!!!

After a grand fight, the fish was boated and weighed in at just under 24lbs.  As the bunker move into the area, the striper fishing will remain hot until at least mid July.

   

 

I have three spots remaining for the open boat on Saturday, July 4.  We are going to fish the wreck areas for some Fluke and sea bass and possibly head to the Barnegat Ridge for some blues if I get some good reports.  Call me at 609 577-2797 to reserve your spot and talk about the trip.

Nothing like having April weather in June.  Fluking remains to be mostly a bay fishing event where we are having to pick through the shorts to put a few keepers in the box.  The ratio seems to be around 20 shorts to 1 keeper.  It is still a lot of fun and a very pleasant way to spend the day.

The weakfish are around but you must put in some serious time.  The mouths of the rivers in the Great Bay and Little Egg Harbor are the usual hot spots.  Schedder crabs, blood worms and grass shrimp are the bait of choice.  You will need to stay away from the boating traffic in order to have have some success.  All of this rain has changed the chemistry of the bay so we will need some quiet weather before I start targeting this beauties.

The stripers are also around but they have not really broken out into the spring run that we are used to seeing.  Once the bunker really start migrating to our area in large masses this fishery will most definitely explode.  Remember, the water temps were still hovering in the upper 40's just two weeks ago.  There have been some really large cows caught in the Brigantine area.  These trophies were caught on bunker chunks in the white water of the Wreck Inlet. 

The most reliable fishery right now appears to be deep water wreck fishing.  The inshore wrecks are producing large quantities of bass but they are just bearly making into the keeper category.  To have real sucess, the deep water wrecks, which haven't been picked over, are producing the Jumbos in the 4-5 pund range.

This Saturday was the LBI Cup which is a striper tournament held by the Beach Haven Marlin & Tuna Club.  The tournament was very successful and over 40 boats entered.  The winning fish brought in several thousand dollars.  I set out on Saturday with a great group of guys who booked me last minute for the tournament.  We left the dock and headed south towards Atlantic City in search of bunker.  The weather was perfect and the seas were calm so spotting the bunker would be no problem.  Unfortunately, we did not see any bunker so we decided to anchor up at Wreck Inlet and chunk bunker in the white water.  The water temperature was around 60 degrees and the conditions were ideal.  After about an hour and a half of heavy chunking, we did not even have a touch.  I had several captain friends close by and they reported similar accounts.  I decided to pick up and head North in search of bunker.  We ran north to about Spray Beach and had some impressive marks on the fish finder about 40 feet down.  We decided to troll and lowered an umbrella rig and a bunker spoon down to the marks.  We managed one knock down in about an hour on the troll.  I decided to head back to the Little Egg Inlet and try our luck chunking in the rips once again.  This effort proved once again fruitless except for the monster smooth dogfish we were catching.  These were the biggest dogfish I have ever seen.  I weighed one of the larger ones for fun and it weighed 15.5 pounds.  I must say, they give a pretty good fish and since we were not catching any bass, it kept us entertained.  We must have caught 20-25 dogfish in the 10 to 16lb range.  Three O'Clock was the cut-off time for the tournament and we headed back in with no bass.  We had a fun day on the water and worked out tails off to find a bass but it was not to be.  There were a few bass caught in the tournament, but many people went home with a similar experience as we had.  The best bass fishing of the year last year was in June as the bunker appeared in large masses.  I am hoping for that once again this year.

Sunday started out rainy and turned into a beautiful day.  I fished in the Great Bay using Gulp Minnows and squid.  We had plenty of action but all the fluke were short.  We did not come home with any keepers but it was nice day and we had steady action.  All in all, it was a beautiful May weekend but the fishing could of been better.  The water has warmed up about 12 degrees from the previous week.  It is still very early in the season and I expect good things to happen soon.