NJ fishing reports

[Father's Day]

strange..I've cleaned a thousand seabass in the last 30 years and never saw a worm. I've seen very few in cod and flounder and grouper. Lots of them in swordfish.

I rank black seabass at the top of deliciousness scale.

I was very disappointed

Yeah, I don't think Ive ever seen worms in sea bass. See them in the larger ling cods and halibut though.

Agree, sea bass is great. I prefer that and lings over halibut.

New item by George Amadeo

photos.app.goo.gl

 

[Father's Day]

I was very disappointed

New item by George Amadeo

photos.app.goo.gl

Here you go my brother's that's worms

 

[SkunkBoat]

Here you go my brother's that's worms

the brown squigglies in the middle one? yep.

 

[Father's Day]

the brown squigglies in the middle one? yep.

Yeah my buddy's like yeah just cook it good, not for me. I was just about to hit it with blackening seasoning and I would have never saw it.

 

[Father's Day]

Yeah my buddy's like yeah just cook it good, not for me. I was just about to hit it with blackening seasoning and I would have never saw it.

They will get a pardon from me every time

 

[Seafarer_Bob]

Looks like a great offshore weather window coming the next few days, anyone else going? I'm planning to run my brother's boat out of the Highlands Saturday AM and maybe Sunday if we have enough energy.
Probably start around that break near LI and keep going to Resor, AP, Triples until I find something. Mostly trolling but I hear there have been some Tinker Mac's around so I'm planning to bring a box of chum and some sabiki's but only one flat of butters.

 

[SkunkBoat]

It is a great forecast window. Thats a good plan. That inshore swirl sure looks pretty. Should be BFT between Manasquan ridge and Resor. YFT anywhere from Resor out to the Triple wrecks spot
The fleet was here last week. Its actully 10 miles past "triple wrecks/Haskell" We caught 2 yft on jigs. Hopefully you find them closer
Lat: N 39°30.5603'
Lon: W 72°46.9006' Same spot that was hot all summer in 2020.

Be ready to JIG the bottom in sand eels. Try to get to a fishable spot by first light and/or stick it out for the sunset bite.

Trying to figure out which crew members can do saturday afternoon out thru the midrange and then overnight Hudson into sunday. I really would like to get into bigeye and a swordfish so I can mark them off the Grady bucket list.

I have a feeling the mahi will have poured in too.

 

[Seafarer_Bob]

Thank you Skunk and good luck if you get out. I'll be monitoring 68 and 71 and will respond to "Seafarer Bob" but I'll be running a 28 Regulator. I also have an inreach and I can message you my garmin address if you have one.

 

[SkunkBoat]

Thank you Skunk and good luck if you get out. I'll be monitoring 68 and 71 and will respond to "Seafarer Bob" but I'll be running a 28 Regulator. I also have an inreach and I can message you my garmin address if you have one.

skunkboat@inreach.garmin.com I'm usually listening to 65 and 68

 

[Seafarer_Bob]

I'll message you my inreach and thanks once again for the input.

 

[SkunkBoat]

Nobody on my docks caught yesterday or today

 

[SkunkBoat]

So I got out late( 5am) Sunday. Crew didn't wake up at 2am..... I used that time to catch 7 dock stripers between 3am and first light 4:30am. Fish from 12" to 24".

We nixed our canyon plans and decided to look for Mahi all day and if we run across tuna then bonus.

Mud hole pots NOTHING, green water. Glory hole pots NOTHING green water. Ckicken canyon pots ding ding ding. Blue water. Small fish trolled on jetheads with strip baits. Some were just too small but some where taco sized.
We kept going out to NOAA 44066 bouy. better size but still small. we kept 18 fish. Beautiful blue water. Worked our way back thru the "Triple Wrecks Spot" for yft. Nothing happening there . Worked in from there to Resor. Stopped on lifey spots no luck. Resor has beautiful seabass and we had our allowed keepers as soon as first jigs hit bottom.

still 20 miles out we ran into a small fleet apparently trying to catch bluefins. We gave it a few jigs and headed for home.
This is the area in the shipping separation zone north of Barnegat Ridge and southeast of Humpty. Near the TOLTEN lump/wreck. Charter guys at our dock have had some success with BFT there but its not a sure bet.
There have been squid in the area and apparently some guys are jigging squid and drifting livies.
Back at the dock one guy had a single 40 pound bft from there. They had an 80 pound fish last week and got skunked in between.

So this morning at the dock cleaning fish. When I was done cleaning mahi, they were cleaning the tuna. Dropped back sushi chunks on a circle hook. I got 5 big stripers and broke off 2. Fish from 26" to 33". That was at noon! Stripers love sushi!
They didn't touch the mahi when I cleaned that.

 

[Seafarer_Bob]

Late report but we fished Little Italy area on Saturday morning. Blowing 15kts from the NW as we rounded Sandy Hook but since they only forecast 5 to 10 I figured it would pass... wrong. By the time we arrived it was blowing 15 - 20 with 4' - 5'+ white caps stacked up at 3 seconds. No turning back at that point so i apologized to my crew and put the spread out while heading down sea. As soon as I headed back into it I took about 50 gallons over the bow (Brothers 28 Regulator...) and it didn't start calming down until 11 or so. The bluefish were tearing us up all day otherwise not much in the way of marks or signs of tuna, the few boats out there I spoke with on the radio said the about the same and "%*&^#@!" the weather man.

By noon it was finally calm enough to run so we stopped at shark river reef on the way home for our 3 Sea Bass and got one keeper flounder, tossed back a couple large Ling, live lined a Tinker mackerel looking for a Hail Mary tuna but it wasn't meant to be.

 

[SkunkBoat]

Got out inlet at 130 pm. Ran to area north of Tolten lump. East of Seaside lumps. Dropped a squid jig and a spinning rod that was rigged with RonZ and a dropper loop hook… using as another squid rod….It got ate by a tuna that didn’t know it was hooked We lost that quick.
Found a couple squid. The second one got ate about 30sec. Hour fight on a bent butt 50. 57” bluefin Back at dock by 6 pm. And dock stripers love sushi!!!!

 

[SkunkBoat]

got out Saturday afternoon to the same spot. Caught 10 gallons of squid. Crazy amount of squid there.
No tuna bites. There were a couple caught in the fleet around 5 to 6 pm

 

[Hookup1]

White Marlin Open going on this week. Cape May and Ocean City ports. $10.5 million purse.

Challenging weather conditions and slow fishing. Day 2 - So far no qualifying blue or white marlin. 199 lb tuna in the lead - estimated $1,000,000.

August 5-9 in OCMD! | White Marlin Open

August 7-11 in OCMD! Join us for the World's Largest Billfish Tournament in Ocean City, MD. Experience the annual tradition of the White Marlin Open.

whitemarlinopen.com

 

[Hookup1]

Big controversy brewing at WMO. A 247.5 lb big eye tuna was weighed in Wednesday. It's now in first place for tuna. If no billfish qualify the money goes to the tuna and could be a $7,000,000 fish. But the crew was sloppy, posted a video of the catch on social media and someone said they were handing the rod around and put it in a rod holder at one point. This would disqualify the fish. The video has since been taken down. 60 boats fished Thursday. Friday should be 350 boats out.

 

[jenbl4ze]

Any mahi or tuna bites in south jersey.....seems like it's always up north more. I would still like to test my luck maybe even at the wilmington

 

[Benkovich]

Does anyone fish out of Ocean City, Md. Thinking of going tomorrow, Saturday.
we fished a week ago Poormans to the Rockpile. No Tuna bites.wound up with 6 Mahi.

 

[blynch]

Don't get down to NJ to fish much anymore but I made it down on Sat to run out of MI on my father's 23 Regulator. Hit the fleet at the tuna spot a ways off Seaside. Quickly got the hang of jigging squid, which seemed to be hugging the bottom and a bit scattered. Had baits in for a few hours after sunrise but did not get a touch or see anyone on bluefin.

Run-and-gunned an albie on the ride West after the breeze picked up, then hit the Axel for a quick 20" fluke. The fresh squid was really doing the trick on fluke and short seabass.