8/20:  Had Harry Sellinger charter the boat with his buddies Scott, Chuck, and Gary. The guys wanted to target BFT's and Mahi on the mid-range grounds.We left in the dark and got out past 30 miles by about 615 when we saw some chicks working an area, so we dropped the jigs but had no takers. We moved on to a well-known large floating object to the E, and found 3 boats on it but decided to take a shot and throw some sardine chunks at it, and quickly had 2 runoffs from some 20 pound class mahi but both busted off.

We continued S heading towards the GH - but found a knocked over high-flier, Kenny quickly threw some chunks on it and we instantaneously had 3 hook-ups, 2 with larger mahi and 1 with a chicken. We were lucky enough to get Chuck's to the boat which later weighed in @ 20# and the smaller fish, but busted off the other bigger fish.

We again continued S to work the pot markers/high fliers in the deep and found varying amounts of mahi on every pot we pulled up to - we did not continue on to fish the chicken or AP area since reports were dismal on the BFT. Some of the pots had loads of 2-5#ers, others had some bigger ones up to 8-10#, and others held nothing. On a few pots we had all-out blitzes with 4 and even 5 fish on at a time, while on others we only picked 1-2. We did have a couple of other larger fish on while working this string of pots but both, again lived to see another day as 1 got wrapped in the pot and another simply came unbuttoned.

By noon time we boxed a load and the guys wanted to go looking for some bigger fish, so we again shot back north to where we started and found the area vacant of other boats, so we threw chunks and had 3 fish on, all 10-15#ers, landing 2 while another came unbuttoned at boatside. By 2 the guys were mahi-d out so we started inshore, and found some fish blowing up on top, dropped the jigs, but came up empty.

Overall, an excellent day. No tuna for us, but more then enough Mahi bites all day long. Best part was that most of the fish were caught on spinning gear, circle hooks and chunked sardines. We only got 1 fish on the bucktail, Chuck's 20#er. At the end of the day we boated around 50 mahi, boxing around 40. There were no real small ones, most of the fish we kept were in the 3-6# range, with a few in the 10-15# range and Chuck's big one @ 20#. A memorable day, and lots of meat for the guys to take home!! Thanks for coming down!!

8/19:   FTYP trip with Cool Hand Al, Ryan, NJ Bob, Fred, and Craig.  Ran to the NE (the reef) where we’ve been catching fish for weeks, and had a few good drifts to start off the day with a slow pick but a few keepers in the mix with shorts.  Also dropped a lot of fish, and missed many.  We had 2 nice fish come off about 3/4 of the way up – heartbreakers!  I got a call of a bite up north, so we shot up there (leaving fish to find fish – doh!) but only came up with short seabass, 1 keeper, and some short fluke.  So, we shot back S to the reef and found a S wind coming on w/ strong S current; drift was 1-2 kts and we had to bump it up to 8-10 oz bucktails and 16 oz. of lead on the bait rigs.  No fish!  Made a move inshore to a lump and found less current, and more fish.  Picked 4-5 keepers there before it dried up.  Then moved down inside the AC reef and had a few more with Fred pulling his 4^th keeper, the biggest of the day @ 23”.  Called it a day as the drift got way too fast and fishing just sucked @ 330.  Thought we only had a half dozen, but when I cut the fish I we had 9 keepers + 1 seabass – not too bad considering the horrible conditions and dirty water!

8/18:  Had Steve M charter the boat for his buddy Billy's bachelor party today... Billy is a die-hard fishermen (both fresh & salt) and wanted to spend the day on the salt, following today's full 8 hr trip with some time chasing walleyes and catfish up in NY state (which is where they're from).

Ran out to the NE where we've been catching the fluke for weeks, only to find a crazy amount of short fluke... Most of the fluke were real shorts, 12-15", nothing even close enough to measure... We were able to pick up some nice keeper seabass, and a handful of taylor sized blues but that was it... We made a move to our S to fish a few other spots but it was more of the same with the short fluke, and way too many clear-nosed skates, one of which took a liking to my left hand as I was unhooking it!! LOL

Overall the guys had lots of action boating upwards of 50 short fluke, but the keeping part was very tough today as we only came home with the seabass and some taylor blues. I'd like to say the SW, then W, then S wind had something to do with the lack of keepers, but whatever it was the bite with the better sized fluke seems to be off right now. The guys were a blast and we will be seeing them again this fall for a bass trip - tomorrow we're shifting gears and fishing a different area.