The fluke are starting to leave the bays and make their annual migration out onto the ocean lumps.  You can still put together a nice catch of fluke in the bay, however, with the water temps reaching close to 80 degrees, the fluke are in the deeper holes and channels.  The keeper ratio in the bay is about 50 shorts to 1 keeper.

After the morning charter fell ill to sea sickness, I went out solo in the afternoon for a little R&R fishing.  This trip was everything but R&R as I had steady action the entire two hours I was on the boat.  In about 55 feet of water, I found a pocket of large fluke and kept making short drifts over the area for about two hours until I had my limit of keepers.  I also threw back around 15 fluke.  A little better ratio of 2 to 1.  The largest fluke I brought in was about 22 inches at 4 lbs.  Oh yeah, the one that got away was around 25 inches.  I had it at the boat and lost it as I went reaching for the net.  The best thing about fishing by yourself is you get to tell the story about the one that got away. 

The fish were there this weekend but you had to work hard to put numbers in the boat.  We started out the morning fishing the GSS Reef and had steady action of black sea bass but the fluke were scarce.  We managed a few shorts but no keepers.  We did manage to land a nice 5.4lb Blackfish which was a nice surprise.  We found a few very small blues along the beach then the weather started to look pretty gloomy so we headed for the bay where we did put one keeper fluke in the box.  The water temp was a warm 74 degrees at the reefs and the winds were 5-10-knots out of the east with a lazy 4 foot swell.  We could have stayed at the reef all day and loaded up with sea bass but I was also fishing a local inshore tournament and sea bass wee not part of the prize category.  

I have spent a good part of the beginning of the summer traveling with the family and managing Little League baseball.  I usually take the beginning of each summer off for "other business"other than fishing and this year was no exception. The beginning of this fishing season in LBI was rather non-eventful with the exception of a few nice bass.  The spring bass run was mostly a northern Jersey event which lasted only about three weeks.  The bays are producing fluke but the keeper to throw back ration is around 1 to 40.  The ocean is just starting to warm up and I expect this to be a great reef fishing season.

The reefs are already starting to produce nice black bass and some real nice fluke.  I am running my first open boat this Saturday, July 10th and still have a few spots left open.

I wanted to acknowledge two awesome catches so far this season.  One was in Oregon Inlet which I witnessed aboard the boat Trophy Hunter.  The fish was a 491lb Blue Marlin.  The other was a 250lb Big Eye Tuna caught out of LBI by Sue Kaiser aboard the local boat Fish Trap.  Sue's fish set the all time women's record for Tuna category at the Beach Haven Marlin and Tuna Club.  Congrats on both catches.