Striper bunker chunking report for Tuesday on the 55 Hooked Up 11

[Caveman Sportfishing]

Update on Yesterday’s chunking trip. We covered a lot of bay and fished 4 different locations without much luck most of the day. We fished in the shallows in 8-12 feet of water and out by the channel in the deeper water far up the bay with only a few lost fish and one in the box most of the day. What we did have was lots of eel grass inshore and numerous doggies at a couple of the locations we tried. It was crazy as we would get one or two bites every where we stopped as soon as we put the lines in and then nothing after the initial bites and still cannot figure out why. We heard a few boats slammed them good at one location and we fished there later in the day and only got one fish and only saw a few boated by the small fleet around us so possibly we got there at the wrong time of the tide. I am still trying to figure out the intricate behavior patterns of stripers when chunking the bay and probably when I do it will be time to retire from charter fishing. I have not had much help from other charter captains as most I know are all offshore guys so I am learning mostly on my own and we have had quite a few excellent trips the last two weeks so I do feel proud of what I have picked up so far this season. As mentioned previously I spent the better part of the last 20 plus years striper fishing the Cape May Rips and Rips I know like the back of my hand but chunking is something we just started doing in earnest the last couple of years and truthfully I am still learning compared to some of the pros that have been doing it for some time now or have friends that have taught them. My closest friends are all mostly wreck fisherman in the fall or fish for Bluefish if you know what I mean and very few have gotten into the chunking game to date so we are doing on the job training more or less but lady luck and a bit of skill has provided some very good striper trips for us this fall but it was not easy on most trips and we had to work hard to find the larger size stripers when chunking.

Now here is the good side of yesterday’s trip. I decided to stay late and fish where we fished the incoming prior to the storm which is very close to the Rips since this is where the incoming tide would run first and it turned out to be a trip saving decision. There was nobody within miles of us anywhere as most boats had gone in or were fishing far up the bay from this location. We had fished there on Monday’s trip on the outgoing with nothing but doggies so I did not so I had no plans to go there on Tuesday’s trip plus the water was filthy dirty and stopping there on the way back in was nothing more than a shot in the dark hoping to provide some last minute action to bail out a long day with a few Hail Mary stripers for my charter. Well as luck would have it we got our first bite within minutes of setting the anchor and it continued into the night with all nice fat stripers in the 34-40 inch range and we finished up with a nice catch of fat 36-40 inch stripers and honestly left them biting in the pitch black moonless night. I think we could have caught the whole incoming tide last night if we had stayed but we were into our 10th hour of fishing and we did boat enough to provide some fine table fare for the group but it took a lot of hard work and a bit of luck to finally make it happen on yesterday’s. Sometimes that extra effort does pay-off and yesterday was one of those days.

[Parker]

Good Luck

[John Rogers]

Way to make it happen Capt. John Pretty work