01/13/2007 & 01/14/2007 - Blackfishing North Star and Searcher II

01/13/2007 & 01/14/2007 - Blackfishing North Star and Searcher II



Well this weekend was jam packed with blackfishing fun!

Amazingly, the weather held out, although threatening rain...we never saw more than a momentary light shower.


As relatively uneventful as the North Star has been, Doug wanted to check it out and give it a go.  As it turns out, there is a good chance he paid a diver to hook fish on the end of his line because he actually won the pool on Saturday aboard the North Star.  Let's roll through the trip...


My dad, Doug, his dad, and I all met up in the early Saturday morning to board the North Star.  Crowd was light, some of the same faces I've seen in the past couple weeks.  All in all, I think we sailed with just 13 guys.


The crabs...as usual...were horrendous.  Thanks to Doug for stopping and picking up some FRESH and LIVE greenies for us to fish with!  I felt it was a MUST and it worked out well since he comes from up North and passes a bunch of bait shops on his way down. Seriously, the boat crabs were like a rotten oatmeal crab mixture...totally rancid.  There were some lives ones...but it wasn't looking good...so I'm glad we brough out own.  Hell the crabs were SO bad, the MATE was picking crabs out of OUR bucket to fish with himself...WTF is that?


Here's a sample...


Some of our crabs...




Some of the boat's crabs...




Mmmmmmmmm smells like fresh strawberries!!!


The fishing was a little better compared to prior trips.  The captain ran wayyy out, SE of the inlet...but there was good life on the first spot.  The captain sat on the spot for some time, which was great...allowed us to work up the bite and catch a decent number of fish.  We hopped around a bit, but he was more patient than usual...which I think made it a bit more enjoyable and resulted in more fish being caught.


In the end, I had a limit of keepers but nothing big and only kept two, my dad also had his limit but nothing big and kept three, Doug's dad had a rough day but did manage to land a few, and Doug as previously mentioned...won the pool with a nice 9.00 lb blackfish (weighed on the NS digital scale) and had one other keeper he kept and a number of shorts.


Here's a few pics of the day...


Doug arriving on the scene...




My dad telling stories about how he caught a bigger fish than me on our prior trip...total BS, it's lies, all lies!!!




See...this is a standard Ronnie fish...nice size Ronnie!!!




Doug, hauling in the big boys!!!




Dad decided he'd do some quality control testing on the bait scissor blades...OUCH!

BTW, that's Ronnie "Macgyver" Mateyak to you!  Duct tape, possibly the greatest invention ever?




Doug thinking, "I'm a pretty, pretty bird...I want to fly away...fly, fly away..."




Doug's Dad, enjoying the day...




Our day's catch...




Doug with his diver-assisted pool winner!  Nice fish buddy!

BTW, for those that don't know, Doug is part Saskewatch...he's like 6'8"?  So scale this fish a bit picture doesn't exactly do it justice!




Another shot...




And Doug's best impression of the fish head on attacking his crab...





Some other shots of the day...i.e., my cheesey picturesque shots..


Quite a rip on the way out...




Sun breaking through the clouds a bit...




Nice sky out there late in the day...




Back at the dock that afternoon...







One other fortunate aspect of this recent North Star trip is that I got to meet a few more nice guys on board, one in particular I have to thank is "Bob".  It was his first trip on the NS, and his last.  He regularly fishing from Barnegat all the way up to Massachusetts, but figured he'd give it a shot down in Ocean City and he was utterly disappointed.  I asked him where he'd go tomorrow (Sunday) if he were going...he said the Searcher II...so that's where Doug and I headed today.


So here's the skinny...


First off, right off the bat, the mate Tom and captain Wayne are just straight up awesome guys.  Super, super nice...very friendly and great to talk to.  Some marked differences between this boat and the North Star.  The crabs for one...are ALIVE!  Imagine that.  As a matter of fact, the CAPTAIN was making it a point to weed out the dead ones once we were back at the dock.  He was down on his knees, getting his hands dirty, separating the good from the bad before putting them back in their holding cages for the night.  That's a mark of a respectable captain if you ask me...certainly shows me he has an interest in seeing his boat catch fish by maintaining his bait correctly.  Tom was Johnny on the Spot with the net, for every fish...up until the point where we just told him we'll call for it so he isn't busting his butt to get us a net for small fish. 


We only went with 13 fares I believe...so we hung close to the inlet and hit the small spots...but they held some real good fish.  It was definitely refreshing to see how they ran the boat.  Wayne works hard to get you on the spots, and shifts around the anchors to move over the structure to continue the pick when it slows down.


The morning bite was just awesome, good solid action for the first few hours with some good fish coming over the rail.  I actually won the pool today with an 8.5lb blackfish (handheld scale someone had, not sure how accurate, but it was a nice fish and my biggest blackfish to date).  I had 8 keepers or so on the day, but only kept 3 for myself...as well as a bunch of shorts, lost count.  Doug was really, REALLY off to a slow start...I straight up felt bad for him cuz I was bailing fish and had two keepers in the boat including my biggest before he had his first blackfish.  Eventually we discussed what was working, he made a small adjustment and started bailing fish himself...he ended up with 3 solid keepers and a bunch of shorts.  Both Tom and Wayne fished as well, and man these boys can fish...they both caught some solid blackfish...Tom had one that had to be 8-8.5 lbs and I'm pretty sure Wayne's biggest went close to 10 lbs...as well as a few other good ones.  Fishing was HOT up until about 12:30 or so..then the bite just DIED.  We moved around to several different spots, but the bite was just retarded dead.  Very, very slow and light scratches if anything...and very few fish coming over the rail.  The captain kept moving around, trying to position us over various structure...but the fish just weren't cooperating...no body was catching much.  We finished the day off slow, I did drop a nice fish about half way up on the last stop...no clue how...he stopped me on the reel two times before dropping, I'd say he was in the 4-5 lb range.


Overall, a really enjoyable trip...and I'll definitely be going back to the Searcher II again.  It's clean, comfortable, and has a great crew that knows how to fish...what more can you ask for!


Here's a few pics from today...


Da Searcher II...




Doug's first tog of the day?  No that's not camo...there's actually a fish in this picture!  Hahaha, NICE SIZE BUDDY!

Note the hand comparison...see now that's SKILL fishing right there...he actually hooked that fish in the mouth somehow!




Doug bailing another one...now ya got it!




Doug, also know as "Joe Cool" or "Smoove Schues"




My two biggest of the day...




Here's a shot of me with my pool winner...




Pic of our catch...