Went out for a day of fishing with Andy on his boat today. We started off the morning by fishing a local shoal for some sharks. As we were pulling up, there was a huge bait ball boiling on top of the water. Looked like a good spot! We put out a store bought chum brick to start, along with two rods, one with a butterflied Bunker, the other with a Herring chunk. Bluefish ate them both. So Andy put on a Deadly Dick and started to catch the bait stealing culprits, which I then butterflied and put onto the hooks. I also deployed one of my homemade Bunker chum bombs. It did the trick. We were soon hooked up with and fighting our first shark of the day. It was a Brown Shark, maybe around 50-60 pounds (guessing). It put up a great fight! It broke the leader while we were fumbling to get it off the hook.

During the ensuing lull, we started to catch mackeral (not sure what type – really pretty though) on the deadly Dicks and then on Sabiki rigs. We used then as bait next, and were soon hooked into our second Brown Shark. Andy got this one. Another great battle. This one swallowed the hook, so we cut the leader. Andy had lost another smaller Brownie earlier when it ate his Flounder rig. We decided that we had our fill of sharks for the day (damn things are tough!), and raced out to Cape May Reef to try for Flounder. The South end was packed with boats, so we stayed up toward the North end. We drifted over some rubble and caught Skates – yeah! We changed up our drift a bit, and found short Flounder. Changed it up again, added some back trolling, and we found some really nice keepers.

It pays to be persistent sometimes, We ended up with 2 at 23″, one 21″, and a 17.5″. Good eating tonight! After the final keeper, things slowed up, and the wind came up, which made the drifts a bit harder. So we decided to head inshore to try some wrecks for Trigger fish. Couldn’t find the first wreck, couldn’t get the wreck anchor to snag on the second wreck, couldn’t find the next one either…so we decided to hit an old standard. We got set up on it, and it was a slow pick. We tried Shrimp, Clam, Shedder, and Green Crab, no Triggers. Got a pair of short Tog each, and Andy got a tiny Bergall and lost a keeper Weakie when he tried to lift it into the boat. Things really got slow then, so we called it a long, fun day. Had a blast! The water out front was 75 degrees today, 78-80 in the back. Should make for some interesting fishing later in the summer…

Tight Lines!