Mike and I went out Striper fishing yesterday afternoon. The bite was slow until around 7pm and then we started seeing a few Bass getting landed by the boats around us in a giant bunker school off of Spring Lake, NJ. I was sort of spacing out staring off the stern of the boat when a gigantic Thresher Shark came and blasted a bunch of bunker out of the water with his giant scythe tail about 20 feet behind my boat. I almost crapped my pants. A couple of seconds later the drag on my Shimano Torium 16 started screaming and I knew that we were in for a world of hurt. We were into the fish for more than an hour and we didn't have a gaff, a gun, a bang stick, or a hand grenade to kill it. All I have is this boring video where you don't get to see the Shark because the camera died and by the time we had the fish subdued at the side of the boat it was pitch black outside and we were the last boat on the water. I showed this video to my son and he said it sucked because you don't get to see the shark. He's sort of right, but if you love fishing you will hopefully be able to relate to the sheer chaos, agony, confusion, and unpreparedness that you experience when hooking a fish that has you completely outmatched in every way. As far as I'm concerned we landed the damn thing, which was about 6 feet of Shark with an additional 4 feet of tail.
By the way, if you think this video is boring I want you to know that I edited it down from 40 minutes to 5 minutes, so just watch the damn thing.
That's my fishing report.
-Mickey
Fri, 18 Jun 2010
INSANE BITE TODAY.
Around 4pm today the ocean exploded off of Asbury Park like nothing any of us had ever witnessed. There was about 1 mile of Striped Bass on the surface blowing bunker clear out of the water. There had to be at least 75 boats on the action and all you could hear were drags screaming and people yelling. The Bass were being taken on live bunker, dead bunker, pencil poppers, Shads, metal, and anything else you could get into the melee. I have never seen anything on that scale, and there are a lot of happy anglers out there with sore arms right now. Even with all of the action we've seen this spring today gets an A+. The best part was that I had no charter today so me and Mike had the whole boat to ourselves. One of those days you're lucky to experience once every few years--by the time we were finished the deck was covered in broken tackle, scales, blood and guts, and big birds nests of line.
-Mickey
Tue, 15 Jun 2010
Bass fishing still incredible in Mid-June
Me and Mike Nucero fished aboard Archangel this morning and we never had to leave the vicinity of our inlet. As soon as we made the right turn to head South from the inlet we saw gigantic Striped Bass spraying Bunker across the surface of the water, the first time this year we found that kind of action in so close. It looked like bombs were falling from the sky in about 20 feet of water, and with one throw of the cast net we had about 70 pieces of Bunker in the livewell. We worked the same school for 2 hours and landed 5 big Bass out of 8 runoffs and again, the bite was over in about 90 minutes. We were in the car driving home before most people were awake this morning, another killer early morning bite.
-Mickey
Fri, 11 Jun 2010
June 11, 2010
With all of the bunker boats pretty much shutting down the fishing out of my inlet this week I told my charter that we were going to fish way earlier than normal. We wanted to beat the spotter planes and the commercial bunker fleet at their own game this morning by running at first light. It turns out that we made the right move because our action was instant and manic, if you were late to the fishing grounds, chances are you didn't find either Bunker or Bass. The bunker were right along the beachfront when we came out and there were also 7 (!) Bunker boats complete with spotter planes steaming our way. We got lucky and with one throw of the cast net we filled our live well. On the first drop we had a tripleheader with the biggest fish topping out at a certified 40 lbs and every guy on the boat hooked into slob Bass. My charter was from Chicago and they had never caught a big Bass before. The next couple of drifts yielded more fish and then it was over. Today was definitely a case of "the early bird gets the worm/Bass."
-Mickey
Sun, 06 Jun 2010
A busy week on the water.
What a week. Ween got home from tour on Tuesday night and I was out on the water hosting Zach first thing Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings. We did very well once again on monster stripers. The weather kept us in the inlet on Thursday (where we played around with some keeper Fluke), and it's a good thing that we stayed inside the river. This 40 foot Cabin Cruiser was smashed on the rocks while trying to run through the fog that night before. Check out some before and after pictures. Here it is on Thursday morning:
Here's what it looked like 24 hours later..........
