01/28/2007 - Blackfishing Searcher II

01/28/2007 - Blackfishing Searcher II



Well this will be a short one...


The fishing actually sucked pretty bad. Super slow bite, we moved around a ton. Hit a spot about 20 minutes out...had some fish right off the bat, decent structure but slow bite...captain picked up and moved off to another spot close by, nada much...then rode down somewhere near Virginia...hit two spots, slow to nada...came back up to NJ...hit a few more spots, and uber slow.


Captain Wayne definitely works hard for the fish, possibly too hard. He gets a little antsy early and shifts the boat around and moves quite a bit. I think he's looking for that sick bite somewhere...but either couldn't the fish, or the bite just didn't exist down there today. The other issue was quite a bit of soft bottom...the wind against the tide did make anchoring tough today...but it was tough to find hard bottom for most of the trip. Either we are fishing very small spots, or just weren't hovering over them right due to the wind and current conflict. Just made for some tough fishing.


I did get to meet a real nice dude named Pete...I call him "Cinnamon Bun Pete" cuz he had that boat cabin smelling like Betty Crocker was up in the joint! Good dude, we BSed quite a bit...he was on the trip yesterday with BillH as well, had a rough time...I think they all did. Today was no different. Also met another dude Danny, we didn't get to fish much, but he was a cool dude...usually fishes his own boat, but came out today to give the Searcher a try.


So, in the end, I wound up with just 2 keepers (keeping 1) and 4 or 5 shorts...it was so far in between bites that I might have counted one twice as I was remembering what it felt like.  My buddy and his dad didn't have any keepers and just trying to get a bite today was rough. Pool fish was meager, probably only in the 4lb range and caught on the first stop within the first 10 minutes or so.


Oh well, definitely the slowest bite I've experienced other than my Captain Robbins experience...maybe things will turn around through the week and I'll hit them up again next Saturday, we'll see.


If you skipped all the reading...Doug and his dad will summarize in these two pictures...and no, the second one was not staged...just a natural picture...worked out funny as hell.  Look at Doug's face...hahahaha


BEFORE...





AFTER...






OK, so this was the staged smile!








Man that's classic!