Well, this certainly was an on-the-fly trip as Joey spotted some fish working hard oceanside and filtered the intel to his network of other captains.
As word came in, the bite was on with a vengence!
30 pounders were being caught and released in hopes of the 40+ pounders crashing bunker like you'd weed through short fluke to get to the keepers!
We're hearing over and over about the chaos ensuing, and while Joey makes a run for his boat...I drive up from South Jersey to the Highlands ASAP!
Joey, his nephew Justin, and I get the boat slipped in and Joey heads to the bunker pods to net a quick 70 pieces before burying the throttle and heading out to meet up with Captain Dan of Reel Music Charters. It's already late with the sun sinking beneath the horizon and Joey is considered about the bite dying.
Rounding the hook, we immediately encounter a school getting blown apart...and promptly drop some live bunker on the pod. Immediate bite offs and bluefish raiding the baits...so we nix the pod and head to where the bass are proven to be. We cross paths with Dan making his way back to the marina as we're hauling south. The conditions are beautiful, nice and flat and we're making good time but the sun has already disappeared.
By the time we reach the area, it's dark...and we're not locating any bunker on the surface...they've already submerged and spread out. We marked bass on the fish finder constantly, and Joey eventually hooked up a striper and handed it off to his nephew Justin who landed the 20-25# class fish on his own! I had one runoff, which as is standard for me with stripers, pulled 10 seconds after the hookset.
After that, we struggled to even get a sniff...running over bass left and right, bunker scattered, bass scattered...but constant readings and no takers. We drifted around the area for a couple hours before heading back to port and pitching a few bunks in closer by the marina to finish up in hopes of some smaller bass being under the bunker schools stacked at the wall. No dice.
Another tough outing...and nothing worse than just missing an all out slaughter. An hour earlier and I think we would have had an hour of crushing them. As it worked out, we missed it all and just couldn't locate the staggered fish once the sun disappeared.
Ahhh stripers, continue their beating on me...if Robin had a monkey on her back with stripers until her trip with Dan...well King Kong is on my back! Haha
That's the way it goes sometimes...I'm determined to beat those mofos!
Big thanks to Joey for inviting me along given the short notice of the bite. We'll get em next time dude!
Here's a few pics from the evening...
Joey slippin the boat in...
Justin's ready!
Nice sunset brewing...
Leaving the marina...
And later..she's gone...and took the bass with her :(
Little Justin, tearin it up!
Get em dude!
Bringin em to the net!
Tough angle on the pic...but here's Justin's striper...almost as big as he is! Gotta love it! :)
Well that's all for now...just a quick recap of yesterday.
Hopefully these stripers will hang for awhile and the winds/weather will cooperate and that sick bite will return once more!
I'm ready! ;)
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