We haven't been out since Thursday 8/9 due to the screaming south wind and nasty weather, but fishing this week prior to the parade of nasty thunderstorms and strong southerly winds was EXCELLENT.  Reports below:

Thursday 8/9:  Had a FTYP today with 5 regulars and headed south to the rocks where we finished up Tuesday.

Picky bite to start but scratched out keepers every drift - all nice NMR's in the 2-5# range with only a couple nail biter keepers. We "carpet bombed" this area (Thanks Walsh LOL) for a couple hours and picked a dozen. Kenny had one just over 7# here, and even I decked one just under 7#.

Ran up to the north reef and picked a half dozen more plus some shorts on a few pieces, and dropped one hog on a live spot

We worked our way to finish up the day as the south wind picked up, and picked away on a few more drops with long drifts. Fred finished off the day nailing a 6# 5 oz. beauty which was probably hooked off Harvey Cedars since he has so much line out.  Wound up with the 5 man (crew) limit and 6 nice seabass. We had 4 fish over 6#, and the rest except for 3 of the fish were in the 2-5# range -- lots of nice quality fish today!! Nice day with a GREAT crew - lots of good hearted ball busting and laughs; the guys went home with huge sacks of meat and again, we had a great day with some great regulars!

Wednesday 8/8:  Had the Comley's on today for our deepwater wreck trip. We brought some of the bluefin stuff along and some stuff for bluefish since Rich loves to put the big demons in his smoker.Broke the inlet @ 630 and shot east 20 something miles to our first drop - this spot is a cod producer and has been very good to us in the past. Today, it was loaded with bergalls and 1 nice ling. Kenny jigged up a nice seabass on a stingo pb&j - but that was it. We shifted around and found a couple more bites, one of which was a 22" pollock taken by Rich.

We then worked our way east another 6 miles, to hit a few pieces - a boat was on one and the other produced just a few bites. So, we shot north 12 miles to another wreck that was a good ling wreck. On this piece we were able to power drift and we had a very good ling bite with mixed size ling up to 2#. At some points we were catching them as quickly as we could get the rigs down. I also boated my personal best winter flounder, which was every bit of 4# (21.5"!!), which was released and rocketed back to the bottom. Rich also decked a beautiful 25" cod, our only codfish of the day.

Interesting part about this piece is that we had a rather large shark checking us out; it got maybe 30 yards off our port side. On an estimate, it looked to be every bit of 10-12' in length, and had a ragged black dorsal - I'm not shark expert and I've personally never seen one, but that thing sure as hell looked like a great white I know it wasn't a brown, thresher, mako, blue, tiger, or hh - so who knows?

Our next stop was to run back to the south and east and try to chunk up a bluefin, and at the very least get some bluefish for Rich's smoker. On the way we threw some chunks at some lobster pots for mahi - no dice whatsoever on that front. On the hook we were only able to catch bluefish in the 9-12# range, and we kept a half dozen and released the rest.

Headed back to the dock at 2:30, but decided to make one quick stop for fluke right outside our inlet - and in 2 drifts, we had a couple of keepers and shorts to 19".  Great day by any standard. We filled a whole bushel basket with ling, and had 1 seabass, 1 cod, and 1 pollock along w/ the fluke and bluefish while releasing the flounder as well as other bluefish.

One little tidbit: Today was the first day, according to my log, since 1987, that I personally caught a winter flounder and fluke on the same trip - that trip was in June of 1987 and it was in the Manasquan River. Either way, it's pretty cool catching both of those species on the same trip.

We'll be seeing Rich, Toni and family again next week for a fluke trip. Great day w/ some great people!!!

Tuesday 8/9:  Had the boys from the SWABC club on board today for another one of their summer fluke charters run by Jim Zimmer.

Ran east of our inlet to start and picked a couple of keepers, but conditions stank and we were reeling up skate after skate mixed in with the occasional short. Started bouncing around, working our way south, fishing some snags just looking for a good concentration of fish.

Every piece we dropped on we'd pick a few fish, but with a kooky drift with the S current and light NE wind we really couldn't get back on the fish after a drift or two. We had a very slow pick until 12:30 when conditions got a bit better.

Later in the day we hit two other rockpiles further south, and both produced a nice amount of keepers and shorts, and thankfully no more skates. The last piece was the best drop of the day where we topped off our box with a few fish in the 4-6# range.

Wound up being another real good trip - 23 keepers made it to the boat to 5.5# taken by Mike, and we had about a half dozen total in the 4-6# range. Mixed in were a few nice seabass as well. All fish were taken on bucktail teaser combos as usual. We'll be seeing these guys again later this month, hopefully we'll get them some BIG fish next time!!