Dog Days
Well, it's been a short summer for me but I've been making the most of it with surf casting sessions twice a week down the shore, and smallmouth fishing on the river almost every single day. Mostly we are catching a lot of smooth dogfish from the surf, but they are huge. Me and Nick have been talking a lot about Dogfish and how people complain about catching them. When you're targetting big bass and catching Dogfish, then I can totally relate to being frustrated, but it's hard to complain when it's August and you can still catch 3 and 4 foot fish to 17 lbs. on every cast, which leads me to my next point. Recently Nick pointed out to me that the NJ state record for Smooth Dogfish is 19.8 lbs. When I heard that I had the same reaction as Nick: "I know that I must've broken that record at least 10 times, but who the hell weighs in a Dogfish? You'd get laughed out of the tackle shops unless it was the record. With this in mind we have begun weighing the really big ones before releasing them just to see how close we're actually getting. The answer is, pretty goddamned close. Just this week alone we had fish to 17lbs, and I don't mean like one or two, we're talking like 50 Dogs in the 15-17 lb. range. So that's my new goal during the crappy summer months, to break the most unprestigious state record of all with a 20lb Dogfish. It gives me something to think about until the Bass and Blues come back around.
On another note, people have been writing to me complaining that they miss the non-fishing related posts like there was on the old site. The fact of the matter is that Ween is on hiatus from touring for a few months and I'm spending all my time fishing. I could talk about the N.L. East title race right now but it's too depressing for me. The Phillies should be up by at least 8 games on the Mets right now but for whatever reason they have been playing shitty baseball lately. Hopefully they will get hot at the right time, but now seems like as good a time as any. C'mon boys, pull it together.
A funny thing happened to me while I was down the shore fishing a couple weeks ago, I ran into my buddy Keith Jones, ex Philadelphia Flyer and now commentator for the Flyers and the VS. Network. I have known Keith for about 6 or 7 years and as luck would have it he was renting a house directly across the street from my place down in Holgate for a few weeks. I got Jonesy out on the beach fishing with us and it was a blast. After much prodding and ballbusting (which he is really good at) we convinced him to man up to some sharks and he did pretty well. It was a great laugh watching his nieces and nephews taunting him while he was getting worked over by a big brute of a shark. The Brownie Troop continues to grow.
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Episode V is now online!
Fishing with Butthole Surfers. It really doesn't get any browner. Just watch for yourself. Click the menu above to view this fiasco.
I'll tell you what, as bad as the summer months are for fishing, the Brownie Troop is definitely making the most of it. Last night me, Cribber, Marc, and Nick went surf fishing on Island Beach State Park, NJ with the nice guys from SurfRocketfishing.com. It is an intense product which gets your bait way out in the water, beyond casting distance, where the big fish are. (check out their website to see what I mean) It has been my goal (and Nick's too) to catch a REAL shark from the beach this summer. well last night we did it three times. Nick had the biggest shark of all, it was 50 or 60 lbs and I had the shark pictured above. We must've lost about 6 or 7 sharks, but all in all it was one of the most fun nights of fishing I've had in a long time. Man those fuckers can fight! I keep forgetting to mention that we now have BTFS flags for sale, probably the coolest item that we offer.
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a great big report
immediately following Ween's Brooklyn concert I headed to the Jersey shore with my wife and son. We have had a house booked fora week down here since last fall. Throughout the past year of touring I've always had this trip in mind as sort of my reward for when all the gigs were finished. Needless to say I brought all of my fishing gear with me on the trip. Summer fishing in Jersey sucks, there's really no other way to say it. From the surf you're looking at a lot of sharks and skates and not much else. From a boat you're looking at fluke and little else unless you go offshore. Anyway, so far it has been a really interesting trip, I got in on Saturday morning and fished with my sister on Sat. night. We caught a bunch of skates and some sharks and packed it in after an hour.
Sunday afternoon and evening may have been the most bizzare day of fishing I've ever experienced. The water here is freezing cold, and I mean record setting cold. Last week the water was in the 50's, the coldest ocean temperature for that week in something like 30 years. There are thousands of people on the beach and only a handful of swimmers, a ridiculous sight for late July/August. Normally I would never surf cast on a summer afternoon because of all the people in the water but I figured screw it. I bought a kingfish rig and brought out two poles, a little one for the Kings and the big stick for anything else. My plan was to catch a bunch of Kings with little Michael and use the heads as Striper bait that evening. I also had fresh Bunker for the big rod. After a couple of casts with the small rod the line went slack and I started reeling. I caught a pufferfish/blowfish that I'd never seen before so I took his picture. I can't remember the last time I caught a fish that I couldn't I.D. so I brought the camera to Margaret at Jingle's Bait and Tackle, my home store. Margaret couldn't I.D. the fish either so we busted out the Peterson's Field Guide and it turns out that the fish is called a Burrfish and usually doesn't come up past the Carolinas. She sent a picture of it to the Atlantic City Press and it may have been in the newspaper, but I never looked.
The day only got weirder. After getting bored with the kingfishing action I chunked up some pieces of Bunker and gave it a heave on the 12 foot rod. I was sort of spacing out when all of the sudden the rod tip went completely to the sand. I damn near peed my pants. I grabbed the rod and it felt like I was hooked onto the back of a train, the fish was running hard and taking a lot of line. A big crowd gathered around me as I started walking down beach, following the fish. After about 20 minutes I saw a 2 or 3 foot tail whip out of the crest of a wave. I had hooked into a Cow Nosed Stingray, not a skate mind you, but a gigantic Ray, not too common on a crowded beach, and almost impossible to land. It actually swam over the jetty and I had to hop over with it. After 2 blocks of walking, and now a crowd of hundreds of people, I got it into the suds and actually had to drop the rod and go get him by grabbing the leader and dragging him out. He was about 30 lbs and people were freaking out, mostly horrified that such a creature was out there on the swim beaches, but the story doesn't end there. Little did I know that it was only the first of 6 (!) that I was about to catch. I catch them from time to time but never in those kind of numbers. The biggest one came that night and I would put it in the 50/60 lb class. It had a 4 foot wingspan and took most of a half an hour to land. Unfortunately I didn't snap a picture of the big boy but I did get some pics of the smaller ones. A true test of your tackle and angling skills.
The one constant down here has been sharks, or smooth dogfish as they're technically known. I don't mind catching big sharks and the ones in the surf right now are pushing 3 and 4 feet all night long, every night. Again, people freak out when they see them come out of the surf, the questions are always the same, "does it have teeth? is it dangerous?" I let them squirm a little and give as vague of an answer as I can. At one point I had about a dozen kids around me and I was catching them on every cast so I passed the rod around to the kids and let them feel what a 4 foot shark feels like on the rod and reel. I was like the pied piper but I think I've created about 40 future fisherman this week.
Yesterday I decided to mix up the action and go fishing with longtime Brownie Trooper James Amore on his boat. James and I have been planning on fishing together since he emailed me about a year ago and finally we had an opportunity. We left the dock out of Waretown yesterday around 4pm and were fishing white bucktail jig heads with Berkeley GULP mullet. New Jersey changed it's Fluke regulations this year and raised the keeper size to 18 inches. All of the reports have been the same, "there's a lot of fish but not many keepers in the mix." We headed out to Barnegat Inlet and set up our drift and James quickly hooked a keeper at 18 inches, a great sign. I hooked up next into a small little dink at around 16 inches and then James' rod went completely vertical. I thought he had snagged the bottom, but he was saying it was a fish. James was using ultra light tackle and it was getting maxed. After a few minutes we finally got a glimpse of the fish and it was a fucking doormat, an 8 lb Fluke. James probably would have won any Fluke pool with this fish and we were fuckin stoked to have such a slab of tasty meat in the cooler. We boated another 5 fish after that and the weather turned foul so we packed it in after about 90 minutes of really quality Fluking. James was a great guy and a pleasure to hang out with. We are gonna fish together a lot more in the future.
Tonight my good buddy Nick Honachefsky is coming down and staying with me. You may remember Nick from episode 4 of the fishing show, we were fishing in a lightning storm. Our goal tonight is sharks, and I don't mean dogfish, real sharks. We are going out to Little Egg inlet and we're gonna fish with dead stinky bait on wire for the big mothers--Brown Sharks, Thresher sharks, Dusky Sharks, etc. I will report back when the trip is finished. Keep those invites coming poeple, we are taking everyone up on them now that Ween is off tour for a little while. The new episode will be finished next week--fishing with the Butthole Surfers, and yes, it's as extreme as it sounds.
-Mickey
Ugly Ass Stargazer
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Episode IV Now Online!
Our fourth installment of the Brownie Troop Fishing Show "Spring Surf Fishing" is now posted on the site. Please follow the menu above to view it. Surfcasting is my favorite kind of fishing and on this night I was reminded of why I love it the most.
There is nothing like landing a fish while standing on the edge of the ocean, it's the fairest fight in all of fishing. Wait 'til you see the conditions we were fishing in. Some very nasty stuff.
I just struck gold. I went to Dick's Sporting Goods to purchase a new setup for Smallmouth and the guy behing the counter told me they had a bunch of the old Shimano Stradic reels in the back and they were blowing them out for around 65 bucks. I already have 2 Stradics and I paid double that for both of them. I'm gonna go break 'em in on some fish tomorrow at 6am. My friend Tom Matthews and I fished the Delaware River this morning up around Stockton and landed some beautiful smallmouth up to 2lbs. Great stuff.
This is my son and my wife's goddaughter today in the creek behind my house. It was Lauren's first fish ever (the Smallmouth) and Mikey managed a Creek Chub. I like these kind of fishing reports, look at those smiles......
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Delaware Recon trip
Chris and I went out and fished the river this morning on a recon trip, not for filming, just a look-see. We caught about 2 dozen nice smallmouth bass, nothing too spectacular, but a lot of them. We also landed a little spike walleye. Chris is now doing Delaware River fishing trips for smallmouth. For information on booking him please check out http://www.ardentangler.org
Here's a pic taken from my boat of Josh Sowden with a nice Smallie.
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