We decided to do a little scouting for a tournament we are in next week. Anthony and I headed out of Squan in the soup.

A blind man could have located bait. Although with very low visibility pretty much everyone was blind. Our first stop we could hear birds working and splashes but could not locate them in the fog (I had decided not go any shallower than 20-25′ when not able to see the shoreline). The bait was everywhere, I think in the 45+ nm we covered there were only about 3 nm that had no bait. It was on top with birds working it, blanketing the bottom suspended you name it we found. Unfortunately there were no bass working the schools.

We made several stops that had more promising marks on the sonar and jigged. Anthony had two hookups that soon dropped off. Once the fog started to lift a little more we gave up jigging and made the run to our intended destination. With flat seas we made good time at 28kts to our nest stop.

Once there we jigged a little with only a few hits decided to go on the troll. Trolled up the rocks, across, up to the cedars, along the west side of the reef and back down to the rocks. Had one nice knockdown and boated two bluefish with Anthony dropping one boat side. He called it a graceful release or something like that but I wasn’t buying it.

On the way in we made a quick stop on some mussel beds but there were only short sea bass and blackfish. There were a lot of boats drifting and anchored bottom fishing the mussel beds and rocky bottom areas. There were also tons of pots and traps there which was suprising. I have never seen that many there but I guess with the pressure from Reef Rescue we will win the reefs back but lose some other productive bottom in the process.

It was a nice day on the water once the fog lifted. The fog definitely made for an uneasy run out but all in all it was good to be back in my home waters.

A friend of mine and very reliable source just had 3 bass on Saturday night in Raritan Bay. The largest was over 40 lbs! on 12 lb. test! They also had bass at 17 and 15 lbs. as well as 5 blues.

Several boats out of my marina came back to port with stripers this weekend. It seems to be an afternoon bite thus far. The bite seems to go into high gear between 13:30 and 15:30 during the past few days. It seems the bottom of the ebb tide is producing the best off Seaside between the north and south piers. There have not been any big fish yet but they are consistently 25″ to 37″ with lots of bluefish from 5 lbs. to 15 lbs. Next weekend looks great and can’t wait to get out and wobble up a few myself.

We headed out to the Sea Girt Reef late morning. It was not a bad ride out and the first 10 minutes were OK before the South wind really started to kick up. Tried jigging where we saw some birds and marks on the FF. Made a few stops on the way back in, had a couple of short blackfish and several blues. Wish I would have gotten up earlier, would have been able to fish longer and probably would have found some larger blackfish. Oh well, next weeks forecast looks great right now….lets see if it holds up.

Well I got out again on Sunday…Once again NOAA was completely off with the forecast. I wish I would have listened to myself and my interpretation of the weather from local weather stations. The inlet was flat and seas were 2′ and somewhat tightly packed. It was very fishable though and we were able to cruise at 20kts. Nothing like the 3′ to 5′ seas predicted. We went for a ride to the north and then out to about 3 miles and then decided to head south of the inlet. I marked a lot of bait/fish on the fish finder all along the Mantoloking pipe so we setup there. It was hundreds of bluefish. The general chatter on the radio was that no bass were being caught and only bluefish. No word of great catches of sea bass either, just a few keepers.

Hopefully the storms will stay away and fishing as well as conditions will improve. The water temps are starting to drop, I was reading 53 degrees on Sunday so the striper run should start any day now!