Nor'Easter!
Just got back from a few days and nights of hardcore surfcasting. The word "Nor'Easter" makes most people think of a couple of wet days spent at home in front of the tv. This is not the case for the fall surfcaster. Nor'Easter means big fish and horrible conditions. Ween's keyboard player Glenn McClelland joined me on a windy and wet expedition that yielded a lot of big ass fish. Just have a look:
Glenn kicked off the action on Tuesday by besting a 13 lb. Bluefish that would've won the top daily prize for Bluefish in the LBI Fall fishing derby if only he had entered.
The Bluefish were destroying our tackle left and right, crossing up lines, making us beg for mercy. Man what a great fight those guys put up, they literally kick your ass and leave you sore.
Finally after sunset I landed a Striped Bass, the fish I came for. This one was pretty typical of the size we've been catching recently, it would get better though.
Fishing in a Nor'Easter is not for the beginner, we started Wednesday holding bottom with 7 oz. sinkers and by the end of the day we couldn't hold with 13 ozs. Look at that surf!
Finally around noon on Wednesday I beached a respectable Bass. This fish measured in at 33 inches and weighed 14 lbs. He is going to be eaten for dinner tonight.
All 'n all this is what makes surfcasting my favorite kind of fishing. Right now I am spending 3-4 days per week on the water and I probably won't be reachable until around x-mas, or until the Bass leave, whichever one comes first.
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Striper Surf
This is shaping up to be a really good fall for Striped Bass. We've had fish on every trip, now we're just waiting for one of the big ladies. These fish were taken on plugs on Thursday on Island Beach State Park. We landed 7 or 8 of them and they had no interest in our bait offerings, just plugs and bombers.
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Episode VIII Carp Rescue is now online
You can now watch Episode VIII by following the menu above. In this episode we net and release hundreds of fish stranded in the Delaware Canal. Very Brown.
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Walleye Trip/Fall Striper run
I've had a pretty heavy duty week of fishing, things are in full swing right now and it's my goal to try and fish every day of the fall Striper run. So far I'm doing pretty well. The week started with a Walleye trip to Lake Hopatcong up in N. Central Jersey with Chris Gatley and a few friends. I froze my ass off and didn't catch anything but the other guys did boat a couple of fish. This is my friend Mike with a nice Walleye.
From there I went to Nick Honachefsky's annual "Fishing Fiesta" down in Brick NJ. The idea is that it's 72 hours of non-stop surf fishing. 72 hours? WTF? It is a wild affair with lots of drinking, fighting, and screwing--and it's all a bunch of dudes! Really though, I held my own and stayed awake for the first 24 hours and caught a bunch of Bass at 4o'clock in the morning. All told we had 16 Striped Bass and then mercifully it started to rain around 8am and the tournament was called off. This means I didn't have to puss out by quitting early, I was really having trouble keeping my 38 year old body awake for 2 days like I used to do routinely. Nicky put a skate on this dude's head after he passed out:
We have 2 new episodes in the can just waiting to be edited. The next episode might be my favorite yet. It's totally brown. Those of you who participated in the Trash Fishing Derby are gonna lose your minds.
The Brownie Troop Fishing Show is now on TV
We are pleased to announce that the BTFS is now airing weekly on station KALB on the Comcast cable system in parts of Northern California. It is on before the midnight movie on Fridays and Saturdays and also at 10pm p.s.t. on Sundays. You can click here to watch the station: http://www.albanyca.org/index.aspx?page=544
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The Fall Classic
The Phillies are going to the World Series, that's all I'm saying.
I have been taking full advantage of my favorite time of the year for fishing. I’ve spent something like 12 of the past 14 days on the water and so far this Fall has been a lot better than last year. Yesterday I fished with my friend Mike Campitelli down on Long Beach Island because we got the word that Big Bass in the 30-40lb class started hitting the south end with the drop in air temps and the strong NE winds. This kind of fishing is not for the casual surfcaster; we needed 10 ozs. of weight to hold bottom with a ripping left to right wind. We met at 5:30am and had our first Striper around 8, it was a nice fish and we released him. Then the Alligator Bluefish moved in and we nailed two of them, one which I weighed in for the LBI Fall Classic. The derby recognizes only 2 species of fish, Bluefish and Striped Bass. For more info click here.http://www.lbift.com/index.htm
Anyway, around 9am we hooked the fish we had come for, a monster Striped Bass that I would estimate in the 30lb range. Mike had the fish on for a good 30 or 40 seconds and we were hooting and hollering, he was hooked good and everything pointed to our first monster surf bass of the fall. Then the unthinkable happened, the 50lb braided line we were using actually cut through the ring on the last guide on my Tica Surf pole. With a loud snap there was suddenly silence, followed by a lot of cursing and then silence once more. A minute ago we were screaming with anticipation and the drag was screaming right along with us…..and then…..shit sandwich. It still hurts more than 24 hours later but now we’re going back with a vengeance. In fishing you try and never make the same mistake twice but some things you just can’t plan for. I hand tie all of my rigs and I take good care of my gear. It just wasn’t in the cards for us yesterday.
I took my son fishing last Saturday on LBI and he filmed this video:http://www.chocodog.com/chocodog/btfs/surfflukin.wmv
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