Fishing Reports Cape May Oct 1 to 31

[CapeMayRay]

Beautiful October afternoon and evening but tough fishing. Left the dock around 3:00 pm with a 2 person light tackle charter looking for some bluefish action as they wanted to get some for a dinner.

Started at the inlet where I was catching some yesterday and we found a few keepers mixed in with super small ones. Worked the inlet and beach front and found them both pretty dead so we went to the back in search of better action.

Worked to death a good number of spots in the back till we found a small amount of bait and caught our first striper of the day on swimming plug.

Kept on working till we found another area with some bait and caught 5 more small bass including this double header.

Charter worked hard for each fish they caught. The fishing was just slow for this time of year and the fish were all small, but the spectacular sunset made a tough fishing day seem better.

Nothing like being on the water this time of the year.

[CapeMayRay]

Beautiful day in Cape May Day. Went to Coast Day at the Lobster House where they had all kind of environment and state groups concerned about the sea. Talked to all the groups there and there are those studying the ocean and those, looking at Delaware Bay and other areas but could not find anyone looking into the health of our back bays. (My concern is the lack of bait caused by the spraying of Malathion for mosquitoes and the heavy long lasting algae bloom this year) Got a couple of ideas to check but do not think anyone is checking or cares about our back bay areas in New Jersey.

With a light wind this afternoon I decided to fish. Left the dock this afternoon around 5:30 on the incoming tide with a light wind. Tried the inlet first and it was dead except for dink blues 8 to 12 inches long.

Tried the beach front and it was dead. No signs of any bait and never even got a strike.

With the sun starting to set I decided to head to the back and look for signs of bait. Searched a good number of spots before I even found one area that held some super small bait.

Put a crease fly on floating line and started getting some hits. Just like the last week and half, they were all dink stripers. Nice an healthy but not a whole lot of fun on 8 wt rods.

Again I was treated to a spectacular sunset. That makes three nights in a row.

Missed way more fish than I was able to hook up, as they are so small. I ended up catching 5 dinks 12 1/2 to 15 1/2 inches and one monstrous 21 1/2 incher. (a big fish compared to what I have been getting Lately.)

Really pretty sad fishing in the back bay for this time of the year. Everyone says it will get better. I sure hope so but with nothing but super small bait around the back and no signs of spearing, peanuts or mullet, I can't imagine why decent size bass would even want to venture in on their way south.

[teddyp]

Nice report Ray. I started to use just the snap at the end of my terminal tackle so I could quickly change my plugs. I got a wolrd of sh*t talked to me up here in NY form other plugger that said it wasn't kosher. Have you ever gotten that from people. I like it so I told the to F- off. Those bigger fish are making their way down. It isn't long.

Teddy

[livetofishnj]

Originally Posted by CapeMayRay

Really pretty sad fishing in the back bay for this time of the year. Everyone says it will get better. I sure hope so but with nothing but super small bait around the back and no signs of spearing, peanuts or mullet, I can't imagine why decent size bass would even want to venture in on their way south.

I hope that it turns on at some point but it seems like the bait and the stripers have been out of synch the last few years. They just don't seem to have any reason to come close to the beach let alone into the back

[CapeMayRay]

Talk about bait out. This past week there were vast schools of bunker off Cape May Inlet 4 to 7 miles off the beach. We never have a problem with our local bait boats, they fish it but never destroy it.

With less species to fish for many boats up and down the coast have turned to the bunker fishery. The local fish plant down here has a couple of extra boats working it this year, and we have some big boats down from I believe Maine and the Reduction Fleet from the south, one of which I believe can hold 2.2 million pounds with the others holding over a million pounds.

It is all legal as the fish are in Federal waters. Years ago the bunker migrated along the beach and mostly inside state waters where only local boats could fish. Outside the 3 miles they are fair game for any boats from any state.

After a week of 9 or 10 boats pounding there isn't much left. Last I heard those schools are no more as they have taken it down to almost nothing. Fishermen need it for bait and chum. The reduction boats grinding it up for fertilizer, feed, etc. seems to be the real problem.

No wonder stripers have to eat weakies, blues and anything else they can catch as there natural food is not there in any quanity.

[CapeMayRay]

Another tough trip this morning. Had a two person light tackle charter. We left the dock at 7:00 am. close to the top of the tide with zero wind.

Went straight to where I caught some fish last night and found a decent amount of bait fish as they cast popping pugs. For a half an hour we had striper action, missing more than they caught, with most being very small. This 21 1/2 incher was the biggest.

Around 8:00 am the wind started picking up and I decided we take the long run and shoot up to Hereford and Nummy Island area. Found tons of bait there being pushed around by small bluefish. It reminded me of the good old days when we had that kind of action down here in the back behind Cape May. Have not seen signs of life like that for a long while.

We worked Nummy and Herefords only picking small bluefish, but at least it felt good to know there was bait around. We did see some short stripers caught on clam by boats anchored and chumming.

Wanted to head out the inlet and run the beach back to Cape May but with the tide out pretty good and not familiar with the inlet we took the inter coastal route back.

Tried our inlet for awhile catching more blues including a nice one that may have gone about 4 pounds. (He must of been lost or feeding on all the smaller ones.)

To make a bad day worse we had a bit of a blow out tide with the full moon and the water was too low to even get into my slip, so I had unload and clean the boat up at an end dock till the water came in high enough to use the electric motor to get into my slip.l

[brad regan 01]

nice reports ray. hopefully the stripers will start coming in here

[livetofishnj]

Originally Posted by CapeMayRay

Talk about bait out. This past week there were vast schools of bunker off Cape May Inlet 4 to 7 miles off the beach. We never have a problem with our local bait boats, they fish it but never destroy it.

With less species to fish for many boats up and down the coast have turned to the bunker fishery. The local fish plant down here has a couple of extra boats working it this year, and we have some big boats down from I believe Maine and the Reduction Fleet from the south, one of which I believe can hold 2.2 million pounds with the others holding over a million pounds.

It is all legal as the fish are in Federal waters. Years ago the bunker migrated along the beach and mostly inside state waters where only local boats could fish. Outside the 3 miles they are fair game for any boats from any state.

After a week of 9 or 10 boats pounding there isn't much left. Last I heard those schools are no more as they have taken it down to almost nothing. Fishermen need it for bait and chum. The reduction boats grinding it up for fertilizer, feed, etc. seems to be the real problem.

No wonder stripers have to eat weakies, blues and anything else they can catch as there natural food is not there in any quanity.

pushing those reduction boats out of state waters was one of the best things to happen for bass fishing in 20 years, it's a shame that more can't be done to keep them further away

[CapeMayRay]

Left the dock at 4:00 pm. on the start of the in coming tide. Fair wind out of the southeast and a forecast of light winds from the west and thunderstorms.

Started at the inlet and found the water nice and clean. No signs of any bait but started catching small blue fish on chartreuse clousers. Had pretty steady bit and hooked one nice one that went maybe 3 lbs.

Couple of casts later we hooked into what acted like a nice bass. Took off hard and didn't fight like the blues. Was even pulling out a good amount of drag. Fought it for a few minutes and just before getting close enough to see it came lose.

Just when things were getting to look good the wind switched from the west and really started blowing strong making it impossible for my charter to cast the fly where we wanted without getting hooked and wasn't up to do a back cast as the water was fairly rough were we were fishing.

We tried to escape the wind by going to the beach front, but the water was a bit dirty there and the wind was tough. Moved into the back but we had fairly low water and the wind was bad there too. About half into the trip it started to rain along with the wind so we decided to do a half charter as we would be beating a dead horse until the tide got higher.

[CapeMayRay]

Was away all day up in Philly. Got home about 5:30 pm. an there was very little wind and very overcast so I had to give it a shot. Left the dock with the incoming tide just starting to flow pretty good.

Got out to the inlet and found conditions great, the water around 64 degrees and no boats, where last night there are about 8 fishing. Talked to a guy fishing the jetty and he said it had been dead with no signs of any bait. The water looked great but no bait. I did manage some small blues on clousers but no big ones and not as heavy action as yesterday.

Shortly after dark I moved to the other jetty and and the one boat fishing left. I worked it for about a half hour and was getting ready to quit when I got a small 19 inch striper.

Decided to put on a super large 7 inch bunker pattern and see if I could get something big. I started getting a few more small fish up to 22 inches and then nailed a nice 26 1/2 one that really put up a nice fight.


Caught one more small guy after that and the bite died. Never saw one bit of bait, birds or sign of fish and caught all my fish in one little 50 yard area.

Around 8:15 it started raining so I called it a night, catching 5 bass for the night on a short trip. Felt good to get atleast one decent fish.