With the LBI Cup Tournament and Holiday weekend combo, lots of boats were on the water today searching for classy striped bass. Unfortunately the reports were dismal. Anglers fishing out of Barnegat Inlet who ran as far north as Manasquan and as far south as Atlantic City had nothing to show for their efforts. We heard of a couple nice bass trolled off of LBI and IBSP but nothing to get excited about. There were a handful of bass, some in the 50 pound class which took the cake in the tournament. We’ll post the results as soon as we get them.

So far this spring’s local snag and drop as well as troll bite is nothing like what we’ve seen in prior years. Could it be the reduction fleet pounding the bait in our area the past month???  It’s very possible. When the local gill netters are struggling to find schools of bait, there’s something up. Some have written it off but like many our fingers are crossed. Maybe it will turn on to close out May with a bang. Historically early and mid June offer great striped bass fishing so we have some time. Things might happen. 

There’s nice bass here cruising the waters of Long Beach Island, just not as active or in the number we all wish for. Expect the activity to turn on as we creep out of this new moon phase.  As always the case around the late May moon, recently some really nice fish were caught by surf anglers. Obviously the largest was Art Eromenok’s trophy 57.4 pound striped bass (on 5/23). We believe this to be the largest striped bass we’ve weighed in from a land based “surf” angler. A close second was Ray Sullivans’s 56.7 pound surf tournament winning bass in 2010. Then Jim Haines’ 55-3 from the mid nineties which is mounted and on display above the bunker cooler. Somewhere in the shop’s top ten falls John Kelly’s 55 pound from 1964 which is known to be the shop’s first surf bass in the Fish Head’s Fifty Pound Club. Over the years we’ve had a number of fish beautiful striped bass, a handful over 60 but only from the boat. None from the surf that we are aware of. Not sure if the LBI surf ever offered up a 60 pound surf bass. Anyone know of one???

Mike Burn weighed in this 28.46 pound bass earlier today. He caught it on the mid-island surf last night chunking bunker.

Gary from Farias sent in this photo of his father in law, Rich Hall. He got this bass of the surf recently fishing bunker.

Armando from Manahawkin stopped by the shop this afternoon with a fat 21″ fluke. He reported fishing off of the mid-island bayside, “I caught the fluke on a bunker chunk as well as some blues. There were other blues and fluke caught too.” Here’s a photo of Amanda from Hopewell Junction, NY with a nice summer flounder she caught fishing near Armando. Amanda shifted gears and put some time in on the surf and got this bluefish today too.

John Delsordo got a nice 24″ fluke fishing the bay today.

“Insane fishing with Captain Mark of Laura Sportfishing!” Matt Polito reported, “The sea bass fishing was great today. We started out slamming the blues in the Inlet. Every cast they were hammering lures. We tried to find some stripers but no luck. We then headed out to the sea bass grounds and got into them good! In less than an hour we had our boat limit.”

Blake and I headed out for a late morning search. We wanted to find some bass but the intel wasn’t promising. We decided to stay in the inlet and made for a quick fun session. We found gators on the feed absolutely crushing plugs. Here’s one of many yellow eyed monsters!

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