609-494-5739 Who else loves this time of year? Awesome weather… 4×4 beach cruising… BLINKING Traffic Lights!!! It’s so nice to travel up and down the Island in a reasonable time frame with no congestion.
Now on to fishing… It sounds like a broken record, but it’s worth stating… The tog fishing at the Barnegat Inlet State Park continues. Load up with live crabs and get in the game! The white chins are snapping.
On the bait front, the area has lots in a panicky state of mind. Piles of peanut bunker are staged up and mullet has made moves the past few days. Smaller white baits (spearing and bay anchovies) are also in the local waters. Yesterday (and Monday) the false albacore jumped on them.
Dave from “Dave’s Out Fishing” sent in a photo (see our Instagram feed on the rightside bar of this page) and a report from yesterday. He said, “False albacore were blitzing for hours. It was an awesome afternoon day.” Another report came in yesterday from our bunker man… “The albies were off of mid-island about 3 miles out. As the day went on, they moved in and were about a half mile off the beach at sunset.” Now’s the time for surfcaster’s to try their luck at these speedsters.
Dante from MagicTail Bucktails and Magic Man Guide Service posted a photo of a nice weakfish on a dock at night. His caption, “Lots of nice weakfish around! It’s great to see them coming back in good numbers. Captain Alex of Lighthouse Sportfishing is into the weakfish too. He stopped in the shop today with a solid report. He’s catching them land based on the night shift using softbaits.
A customer by the name of Mark stopped in today for some clams and chum. He reported catching a couple dozen blowfish as well as a trigger fish on his last trip out. Mark mentioned he is fishing the bay on the south end of the island and added, “small resident bass are exploding on poppers!” Anglers fishing mid-island and also up on the north end are getting into the fun too.
One local angler purchasing some plugs said, “There’s plenty of healthy fish around. Most are small but I got one in the upper 30″ range.”
REMINDER: The LBI Surf Fishing Classic kicks off this Saturday October 7th. Sign up and don’t miss out on the annual opening day surf fishing seminar. The free event is Saturday morning at 10am. Location: Ship Bottom Fire Hall.
