Mixed bag
Had high hopes of running out to the Glory Hole but my crew bailed. Left the dock at 6 am solo, broke the inlet and was greeted to birds working and only two other boats in the on the action. Had non-stop action with spike weaks for two hours until leaving fish to find fish.
Moved out onto the Axel Carlson Reef and with very little wind or current and the few boats that were anchored and doing circles decided to drift the deck barges and rock piles. Again had non-stop action with mostly short sea bass and monster porgies. Had triggers coming up with the porgies but couldn’t hookup with any. Also released several would be keeper fluke. After boxing a few porgies I said screw it and headed further off.
Put lines in at the 15 line and the inshore slough and headed toward Little Italy. Shortly after I had a falsie on a green/yellow mini feather daisy chain. Reset the lines and 10 minutes later had another one. Circled back around and had big splash on the mini spreader bar. Then a smaller splash and I thought I finally had something good, but it came unbuttoned after about three minutes. Reset the lines again and trolled back toward Manasquan Ridge without a touch. Had great marks deep, never stopped to jig, didn’t feel they were concentrated enough warrant it, in hindsight, probably a bad idea.
Picked up and ran back to the reef and boxed a few more porgies and at 2 pm called it a day.
I also started using the Lucanus jigs that have been in the boat all season, they work pretty well. Had weakfish and sea bass on them Sunday and sea bass on last Tuesday. Only reason I tried them for weaks was I had broken off the leader on my spinning rig and didn’t want to take the time to re-rig so I tied in a dropper look to put on the chartreuse/yellow clouser that I was doing so well with the weaks and I started getting double headers. The jig that worked for the weaks was the green/gold. It was the 3oz size which was overkill for the drift we had in 30′ but I had only planned on using it get the teaser down but the weaks were all over it.
I normally don’t stay out that late and now I remember why…the inlet, train bridge and canal were a zoo. The hard charging outgoing from the moon and the SE breeze didn’t help the inlet with all the joy riders that haven’t been out in a month but it was still a great day on the water and glad I went. Water inshore was 66-68 degrees and pretty clean and green/brown, offshore was clean, blue/gray and 64-66.
Tags: bait, BFT, bluefish, bunker, fluke, jigging, porgies, reef, sea bass, weakfish, wreck & reef
