Written by Capt.Allen  Â

Saturday, 12 May 2012 19:08

Had Willie E charter the boat today with some of his comrades from NJ Hunter - Cat, Brian, Mike, Paula, and Laurie. Our goal was to catch a hog - so, we ran down south where some big fish came up the last few days on spoons and bunkers. Found plenty of bunker off Mantoloking, loaded up. Continued south, but found nothing but more bunker. Put the spoons in off SSP and trolled down to the bathing beaches in 55-65' for 2 + hours. In those 2 hours, we didn't get a freakin' sniff, nothing even close to a knockdown or even a bump. It was lifeless! We ran in on the beach to try fluking to kill some time, still nothing. Then some calls/texts started coming in from up north - we talked it over with the crew and decided it was time to make the 25 mile run back north where the fish were chewing in the Deal-Long Branch stretch. So, at 10:30, we shot north, got up on the scene by around 11:20 or so. We found MILES of bunker, lots of boats, and finally, some fish. Mostly bass in the 15-20# range, a few bluefish, but lots of bites for the crew. We wound up bouncing around the pods, fishing in the deep, and picking away with some fish lost, some fish missed, and some meat (7 fish in total) for the box. The last fish of the day was Mike's, which was 46-47" and was ~40# - all others were in that cookie cutter 15-20# range. Salvaged the day by making that run, and getting putting some meat in the box for the crew who fished hard all day!