The weekend was so - so. The bass bite shut down unless you managed to get lucky and find them but the recent trips of just getting outside the inlets and finding them quickly was not the case for the long weekend. Most of the guys searched from Manasquan up to the Shrewsbury Rocks with out finding th ebig bodys of fish. There were small pods of bunker spread all up and down the coastline, but no big bass pods.
The fluke season opened up without a big bang as well. There were alot of smaller fish caught with some nice fish weighed in, but nothing like we expected due to cooler water temps slowing it down. The temps were about 9 degrees cooler than they have been recently.
Capt. Ed and Jimmy Esso from Team Jersey Tackle Charters were out over the weekend with some charters and they found a good amount of seabass up to 4lbs and fluke up to 5.4lbs off Lavallette fishing around the "Moon Crater" . They had them on Saturday and Sunday!
I was out Saturday in the morning, dealing with the rain and we only found the fluke biting inside the bay waters. All shorts and we got boarded by some CO's that were out nailing people with shorts. We were talking to them and they said about 50% of the boats had 16" fish on them.
We asked about the fines they were giving out. Heres the process: Each fish is $30.00 fine. If the fish is alive, they take a photo for evidence and release it. If dead, they take a photo, bag it as evidence and freeze it at HQ. The end of the year, the crabs eat well they told us. We were one of the few boats that were cooperative they said. We watched them throwing down some ink on those summons for about 2 hrs.
I was out again Monday morning and again, it was dead in the ocean and the Manasquan River. The bay area was better with warmer temps and I had a 22" fluke and some shorts.
I thuink it all has to do with the cooler water temps right now.
The beaches had some shorts and the occasional keeper that went about 12lbs or so.
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