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This is a little bit of a long write up but I'm sure you'd all rather read about fishing than do work on this Monday morning!
Met up with a buddy pre dawn Friday on the south end of LBI to search for bunker and bass schools that were thick the day before. At daybreak, there was bait that turned out to be herring everywhere and a few striper marks. We trolled for a couple hours with no results and got the call a major blitz was going on but at the north end of the island. We went back to shore, loaded up, drove to the north end and relaunched just south of Barnegat light. We trolled crazy far north, past the inlet, past several blobs of peanut bunker with nothing on them. The fish had moved north and once we got about 3 miles north of the inlet we could see the birds, boats and trucks on the beach a few more miles ahead. We had to decide whether to go for it and risk a nighttime return for our surf landing or turn around, go 7-8 miles back to our launch and drive an hour north to try and get in on the last couple hours of the blitz.
Thankfully, common sense prevailed and we trudged back south against the tide, landed, loaded up and drove north to meet several buddies who reported the biggest blitz of the year with adult bunker, peanuts and herring washed up all over the beach and stripers and blues crushing them in the wash. Even blocks away we could see the birds in the air. Thousands of birds! We got down to the beach and it was mayhem. Boats, surfcasters, bait everywhere, stripers boiling as far as you could see, gannets blacking out the sky. We quickly launched and immediately got into stripers and big blues in the 30 inch class. The action stayed hot for about an hour, until the boats drove the fish and bait further out. We picked fish until dark and went home with sore arms and everything else from an estimated 25+miles of pedaling and 3 separate surf launches/landings.
On Saturday I rested. Sunday I woke up at 3:30 am and drove to south Jersey to meet two buddies and be on the water at dawn to try and intercept bigger bass and bunker. The launch was a litttttle sportier yesterday and my one buddy took a wave over his cockpit but didn't flip. We were instantly in to fish. I hit one trolling a bunker boy in about 5 minutes and when we got out to 20 FOW the bunker were thick and snag and drop immediately began producing. We were into fish until about 1-2 in the afternoon when the bunker disappeared and the bass followed suit. We probably caught and released 30 bass in the 15-30 lb range between the 3 of us. My one friend got a beautiful 30lb+ fish which was his new pb by a long shot.
At some point during the day the wind shifted from NNW to southeast and the swell and thundering of the waves grew all day. We knew the landing was gonna be tough. My two friends weren't very experienced with landing in 3-4 footers. One followed me and one yelled, "I'm just gonna go for it dude!." He didn't pick a very good spot as there was no cut and 3 sets of breakers. Predictably, a wave picked him up close to the beach, pitched him forward, slammed the nose of the yak into the sand and he pitch poled in the wash. Thankfully it was waist deep water and he was able to recover most of his gear except one pretty nice rod/reel setup.
Once my other friend and I landed, we grabbed our bunker snags and started casting with him hoping for a miracle that we could snag this rod. Amazingly, after only about 15 minutes the guy who flipped snagged something about 20 feet out and reeled in his rod!!!! We all took home nice 15 lb keepers, caught and released many nice fish and no one lost any gear in the end. A pretty solid day/weekend of fishing in what has been an excellent fall so far.
Met up with a buddy pre dawn Friday on the south end of LBI to search for bunker and bass schools that were thick the day before. At daybreak, there was bait that turned out to be herring everywhere and a few striper marks. We trolled for a couple hours with no results and got the call a major blitz was going on but at the north end of the island. We went back to shore, loaded up, drove to the north end and relaunched just south of Barnegat light. We trolled crazy far north, past the inlet, past several blobs of peanut bunker with nothing on them. The fish had moved north and once we got about 3 miles north of the inlet we could see the birds, boats and trucks on the beach a few more miles ahead. We had to decide whether to go for it and risk a nighttime return for our surf landing or turn around, go 7-8 miles back to our launch and drive an hour north to try and get in on the last couple hours of the blitz.
Thankfully, common sense prevailed and we trudged back south against the tide, landed, loaded up and drove north to meet several buddies who reported the biggest blitz of the year with adult bunker, peanuts and herring washed up all over the beach and stripers and blues crushing them in the wash. Even blocks away we could see the birds in the air. Thousands of birds! We got down to the beach and it was mayhem. Boats, surfcasters, bait everywhere, stripers boiling as far as you could see, gannets blacking out the sky. We quickly launched and immediately got into stripers and big blues in the 30 inch class. The action stayed hot for about an hour, until the boats drove the fish and bait further out. We picked fish until dark and went home with sore arms and everything else from an estimated 25+miles of pedaling and 3 separate surf launches/landings.
On Saturday I rested. Sunday I woke up at 3:30 am and drove to south Jersey to meet two buddies and be on the water at dawn to try and intercept bigger bass and bunker. The launch was a litttttle sportier yesterday and my one buddy took a wave over his cockpit but didn't flip. We were instantly in to fish. I hit one trolling a bunker boy in about 5 minutes and when we got out to 20 FOW the bunker were thick and snag and drop immediately began producing. We were into fish until about 1-2 in the afternoon when the bunker disappeared and the bass followed suit. We probably caught and released 30 bass in the 15-30 lb range between the 3 of us. My one friend got a beautiful 30lb+ fish which was his new pb by a long shot.
At some point during the day the wind shifted from NNW to southeast and the swell and thundering of the waves grew all day. We knew the landing was gonna be tough. My two friends weren't very experienced with landing in 3-4 footers. One followed me and one yelled, "I'm just gonna go for it dude!." He didn't pick a very good spot as there was no cut and 3 sets of breakers. Predictably, a wave picked him up close to the beach, pitched him forward, slammed the nose of the yak into the sand and he pitch poled in the wash. Thankfully it was waist deep water and he was able to recover most of his gear except one pretty nice rod/reel setup.
Once my other friend and I landed, we grabbed our bunker snags and started casting with him hoping for a miracle that we could snag this rod. Amazingly, after only about 15 minutes the guy who flipped snagged something about 20 feet out and reeled in his rod!!!! We all took home nice 15 lb keepers, caught and released many nice fish and no one lost any gear in the end. A pretty solid day/weekend of fishing in what has been an excellent fall so far.
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