Fished on 7/5/2010
Water Temperature: 74
Water Clarity: Fair
Seas: Calm
Weather: Hot, Blue Skies
Fishing_for: Fluke
Boat: CinSan
captain: Bruce
Report:
We ran back to the Knoll this morning and hoped to find the fish we left on Saturday still there. They weren't. We drifted most of the Knoll and hardly picked. It was a good long drift. There were fish but no concentrations of them. We moved down the beach as far as the Gull's Nest (2nd bathing beach)and again found a confused drift with lots of shorts in close. I switched to a 1oz Spro tipped with a pink Gulp mullet and a pink Gulp mullet dropper so I could "move" the bait. On almost every cast I caught a short on either the jig or the dropper. We moved to deeper water and I began to clean up on skates and smooth dogfish until a double header of dogfish broke me off at the boat.
Another move to a bit farther off found us near the big school of bunkers we saw on Saturday. This time I thought I'd snag and drop a bunker. I saw a swirl in the school and then another. I had on runoff on my snagged bunker and never got tight. Then about 400 yds. away the surface exploded with at least a dozen stripers. By the time we eased over, they were gone. I guess we could have chased those schools all over but chose not to. It was promising to see so many stripers still around.
We moved out to the #1 buoy hoping to get a slow drift on the ebb. The wind was no help and we bobbed around again catching mostly skates with very little drift. Again, about 400 yds. away, the surface exploded with stripers for about a minute before it was over.
Our last move was back to the Knoll near the single stick where we caught some shorts with a few keepers mixed in. By this time we had the right drift over some cooperative fish.
What we learned was that right now, there are no sizable concentrations of fish near the outer channel markers or in the deep off Sandy Hook. There are shorts along the beach in close. The hot weather affects the wind and drift. Stripers are still around. No party boats ventured past the #10 buoy and none went down the beach. At least one party boat stayed in the middle of the bay off the pound nets. I also learned that pink Gulp works as well as chartreuse. One other bit of information I put in my memory bank was that there are porgies on the Knoll if you anchor when the current isn't running too fast. The Jet was on those fish for awhile and it also looked like they picked some ling as well before they picked up and left.
And finally, the "Epic" (Norwegian Cruise Line)is one heck of a big ship. It left today around noon and was last seen heading out of Ambrose. By the way, does anyone know where the Fast Streak was heading this A.M.? It was speeding SE out of the Sandy Hook Channel and was still going east when we last saw it. Any ideas?
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