VOYAGER TILEFISH REPORT 9-4

[Fishing Report]

September 4, 2011

Between moving the boats around for the hurricane and running TILEFISH trips its been hard to put a report together. I believe we have made two 2-day tile trips since my last report.

On the first trip we had poor conditions to start, lots of current. We managed to catch some BLUELINE TILES and some small GOLDENS. We had good action with the very tasty ROSEFISH and we caught the largest TILE, 42 1/2 pounds, on a ROSEFISH spot. The afternoon of the first day saw a slow pick of fish some fish around 30 pounds. On the second day things started out very slowly. We tried three different canyons with no luck at all, zero! We went to a spot where I was sure there were fish and made a drift. We drifted and drifted and drifted without a bite. Just when I started to explain over the PA how sure I was that there were fish in the area, that it was just a matter of time until they bit, we got our first fish on. We started to pick at nice sized fish over the next few drifts. We kept pounding the area and the drifts got better and better. We started seeing more and more fish with some up to 33 pounds. We even made an extra drift catching another dozen before heading home. All in all the trip ended up a good one. The 33 pound pool TILE was caught by Jim Rice (Captain Barry Goldman had the 42 1/2 pounder) and the "other edible bottom fish" pool was won with with a 17 pound WHITE HAKE caught by Rick Petschaeur of Spring Lake, NJ.

The trip that we just returned from was a bit different. We started in some proven TILEFISH areas with little success. We moved to a ROSEFISH spot and picked away at them for a while. While fishing for the "ROSIES" we caught some HAKE up to 10 pounds, WRECKFISH up to 25 pounds, BARRELFISH to 7 pounds and some small TILES. The wreckfish won the "other edible bottom fish" pool and was caught by John Szymanski of Philadelphia, PA. We then targeted the TILES again but fishing was just a slow pick. Fred Pohlig of Bellmawr, NJ did catch the pool winning 35 pound TILE at that time. On day two we steamed to the most productive area from the previous trip. With a very slow wind against tide drift we only picked a few. During the day the breeze would pick up and the boat would drift and we would catch a few but then the drift would slow down and so would the fishing. We did manage one pretty good drift late in the trip that really helped out. The strange thing about the day was that most of the fish were small. There were a few in the 10-20 pound range and maybe a couple in the mid to upper twenties but most were 5-10 pounds. After seeing the nice quality in the area the week before, I was surprised. I guess the big ones moved or just didn't want to bite that day.

If you would like to enjoy some of this fishing, we have added one final 2-day TILEFISH trip to this season's schedule. It leaves on Monday night September 12 at 10PM returning Wednesday evening between 7-8PM . Before you book, please note that if the weather forecast is poor for this trip we reserve the right to change this into a 1-day trip and refund the difference (that means we can shorten the trip on either end). If you have any problem with this policy please do not book this trip. The fare for the trip is $450 and spots can be held by e-mailing me from the website. I will hold the spots for 5 days while people send in their payment. There are still spots available.

We also have a few spots left on our final 1-day trip leaving at 10:00PM on Sunday night September 18th. The fare for this trip is $300.

Captain Jeff Gutman
VOYAGER
P.O. Box 1329
Point Pleasant Beach, NJ 08742
http://www.voyagerfishing.com
Call us at 732-295-3019