10/24:  Had the Harry Sellinger charter on board consisting of Harry and his buddies Jose and Gary.  Ran a little south to start off, and had some bluefish, birds, and fluke on the jigs first thing. Harry nailed a beautiful 21" fluke that went right back in. We got into a little better bluefish bite a bit further south, then went into search mode looking between Mantoloking and Seaside; only found a few more bluefish. Got a call there was a bite going on nearly 20 miles to our north, so off we went to try to cash in.

When we got there we found a good sized fleet, a few birds working - we just missed the bite. We only picked up a handful of bluefish, as well as a few seabass on the jigs. Again we read loads of fish, they just didn't have the feedbags on. Went up on the troll for the last hour and picked a few more gators on red tubes.

Very tough day for us - we had a bunch of blues in the 7-10# range, but no bass. Harry and his boys were a great crew - they fished hard all day and had a blast with the blues they caught. We covered a lot of ocean today to put some fish in the box; it just didn't happen for us!

10/23:  Had the Chuck "Chuckles" Koncen charter aboard, consisting of Chuck, Jim, Charlie, Andrew, and Darryl.  Initially ran north and got as far as SRI about 2 miles off - some readings and some birds looking around, we only jigged up a few fluke and sea robins. Got a call from my buddy Keith from Anticipation that he was into some fish down south, so off we went.

When we got there we had birds working and some of the best looking fish marks I've seen all season long - we got the jigs in and it was insta-gator fishing. We ran all over the area, working from IBSP to Lavalette, on birds and marks, and caught nothing but demons. We read a helluva lot more than we caught!

By 11 that dried up, so we worked back north. Found a few more patches of bluefish and had one shot at what I think was albies - no shakes on the speedsters. Again we ran in on the beach, back off, just looking but finding nothing but the occasional bluefish.

At 1PM the charter elected to switch over to bottom fishing. We made a drop on a rockpile on our local reef and had some good action with tog, porgies, and seabass as well as a load of bergalls. For the hour we did it, we had about 10 tog, 4 keepers, about a half dozen porgies and a dozen seabass all returned for the 11/1 re-opener. Too many bergall bites - some of the bergalls were upwards of 10"!

Tough day, but we still caught fish... we ran all over trying to get these guys a bass, but it just wasn't our day -- we wound up with a load of blues, kept 8 for the table, as well as the tog and porgies. Chuck and his crew were great - they are tug boat guys from the city and were a blast to have on the boat