Date: Saturday May 30, 2004 Fish: Striped Bass, Sea Bass, Fluke
#: 6 big fat fluke Largest: 5.5 lbs
Location: Long Beach
Crew: Allan & Bob (everyone else was sharking on the White Rose
With 2 clam chum's in tow and a good bunch of fresh bait we headed for the spot they slaughtered the stripers on Friday. Just 24 hours earlier. Seemed a sure thing. Well, we made a few drifts, tried chumming... Nothing. No one was catching any stripers. Not at Riese Park anyway (not at the Warior either). Allan spotted some birds working towards the beach so we headed there and got some bait for the Hudson Anglers shark trny (next week). We played for about 45 minutes catching spunky 2 pound bluefish and decided to try for some seabass. Once over some structure we got good bites almost immediately. Then... Well, for some reason, Allan thought he'd loose less rigs fluking that trying for sea bass (don't ask). To make matters worse, he rigs with a tripple hook rig and a ball. Well, it was down for no more than 30 seconds when Allan starts screaming like the little girl in the Exorcist. Muttering something about the anti-christ and loosing that expensive rig and hating drifting over structure... That's when it got worse. In his fury he jerks his newly rebuilt rod up and when the line came tight the rod flips out of his hand and sinks like a rock. Now he's out a rod, reel and that dumb rig. OK, Plan D, we hed for Long Beach for some Fluke. I stay West and South of the fleet and we start catching big fluke. I'd say the keeper ratio is 2 keepers for every short. Allan & I manage our limit, but Bob is running slow today. It's late & Bob has some family thing so we head back in. Even though we only had 6 fish, there was a good amount of fluke there because of the size.
On a side note, Mike on the Impetious One had a 9.5 pounder! & the White Rose had 9 Blue Sharks at the Rock Piles.
Good Fishing - Captain John