I had no particular plan except to spend the day on the water. I wish I could have planned on targeting stripers but when I broke the inlet and was created to 64 degree water and the sun was just coming up I figured that would be a lost cause. I marked water as warm as 67.2.

As I started running down the beach there was not a bird to be found except for migrating geese. I made a few quick stops along the way where we had fish last week but there was even a lack of bait on those structures. I continued south and started to mark bait and fish between Mantoloking and Ocean Beach.

There were a lot of boats working the area and all they were doing was working. I decided to drop down some gulp on a bottom style rig. Immediately had a double header of spike weakfish. With the small size of fish I decided to move on.

I setup again off Top of the Mast in 60′ of water and began catching 18-22″ weakfish. I setup on a bait rig and sent it down to see if there were any takers. I continued bail the weakfish and quickly had my limit. I had no takers on the live lined fish.

I stopped on a couple of inshore wrecks on the way in and had more weakfish and hoards of 11.5″ sea bass. I did have quite a few real strong hits that stripped the gulp bait right off a bait holder hook. Didn’t feel like blackfish…there was no tap, tap, wham! Just a single strong hit. Will probably make quick stops on those spots again this weekend to try and figure out what was down there.

Spoke to RTK and John on the radio (From Barnegat Fishin’ Hole)…sounded like they both had small bonito throughout the day. I trolled back to MI with only bluefish on the clark spoons. I would have though 6 kts was fast enough to avoid them, even increased to 6.8 and still picked up blues.

All in all it was a nice relaxing day on the water and fish in the box. Hopefully we will see a drop to normal temps, this 10+ degrees above normal is going to really kill the fall run. I hope the fish when they come south around LI don’t stay out far and pass us by

I originally was setting out in search of some weaks. After cruising the bay, the Mantoloking Bridge and the Matedeconk I decided to head towards the inlet and maybe outside for some croaker/weakfish action along the beach. Got near the end of the inlet and the 33 foot express in front of me disappeared in the trough so I decided to stay inside. First drift produced a keeper. Next few drifts produce shorts and then another keeper. All fish were caught on homemade chartreuse bucktails with white Gulp! shrimp. Watched a few other boats try the same drift as me to not catch or even get a tap. The action was fairly consistent over the same piece. All in all not a bad way to end the fluke season.