My head is spinning right now. We struck out Thurs afternoon on the big striper hunt after my big rah rah speech about being there or reading about it. Turns out you didn’t need to be there and there’s nothing to read about. We trolled all afternoon without a hit, and worse, it didn’t even feel like we were going to hook up. No bait, no readings….Deadsville up and down the coast except for Raritan Bay/Sandy Hook, those guys are lighting it up and that’s a little too far of a run from Barnegat Inlet. On our way back we stopped at the Barnegat Inlet jetty to cast for some blues just to put these guys into some action and it turned out to be all stripers. Nothing legal, although we came close with a 27 1/2 incher, but a blast on the 10 pound spinning rods. That action was good enough to return yesterday (Friday), of course, we left out the trolling effort. We started out casting 2 to 4 pound blues in the inlet and then when the tide was right we switched to our striper spot and connected with three bass, 24”, 12 lbs and a 21 pounder! Here’s a clip of the 12 pounder: youtu.be/5PG3IfnDau0 All on light tackle and casting soft plastics. We also caught short stripers on both days behind the sod banks.
I’m going to focus on this fishing for a little while until I hear something better out front. I also picked up some shedder crabs and a flat of sandworms as I hear the south end of LBI is giving up some nice weakfish. I thought we could try our own west side of the bay here or take the run down there.
As if that’s not enough to chew on, the canyons are on fire with bluefin and yellowfin tuna. Anything from 30 to 100 plus pound fish. Now, we’re not a canyon boat, but……we can go when the weather window is really good. The World Cat is a very capable hull, we just put brand new motors on her, I have a brand new six man Viking survival raft, an EPIRB search and rescue beacon, and a Garmin/Sirius/XM weather station onboard the boat. I bought all that stuff before I bought the first gold reel. I’m not going to give any dates or advertise canyon trips because my rate of cancel would be so high on any dates we pre-book. However, feel free to check in if the marine offshore weather forecast looks really good for any Sat, Sun, or Mon.
Like it does tomorrow (Sunday)!!
Running Open Boat or Charter tomorrow (Sun) and Monday, June 10 and 11 for ?????. you tell me.
I’m game for any of it.
Pic: Capt. Nick DeGennaro with his 21 pound striper
Capt. Dave DeGennaro