Cape May and North Wildwood, NJ

[J.A. Veil]

I am doing a long weekend in Cape May with my wife and her relatives. I brought my Manta Ray 11 with me so I could get in some fishing. Yesterday I launched into a small tidal creek in Cape May and fished for 3 hours. Today I launched near the North Wildwood Inlet and fished for 4.5 hours. I used two rods with double-hook bottom rigs. One had flounder hooks and the other had very small thin-wire circle hooks (smaller than a dime). I used 3" and 4" Gulp swimming mullet as the bait. On both days, I caught 6 small black sea bass (on the circle hook rig) and 4 flounder (about half and half on the two rigs). Today, the off-white Gulps were hit more often than the chartreuse.

I was fishing blind (no FF/GPS) and had no fishing partners with local knowledge. I just drifted with the current and paid attention to where on the drift I got bites. Then I went back and visited those spots again. This morning the waters were much wider. The tidal currents moved fast. I found one interesting spot where the outgoing current rushed past a grassy point. However, on the back side of that point, there was an eddy that had current pushing in the opposite direction. I stayed in a 1/4-acre area for the last hour with just a few minor adjustments with the paddle to push me to the edge of the outgoing current, then caught the incoming counter-current to return to the starting point. I had lots of nibbles in that area and managed 1 flounder and 3 black sea bass before calling it a day.

[Mark]

A little piscatorial pullage during a serene family vacation to Cape May is always a good thing.

Congratulations.

[AbuMasgouf]

Nice John!

I have similar sized circle hooks (#10 I believe) and haven't had the success I expected with them on a regular basis (i.e. fish hooking themselves). I'm curious how you bait your hooks using shrimp etc, and even more curious how you rig them using the gulp? They are so small I'd imaging rigging gulp on with the normal way (running the hook inside the front and out the top) would be difficult....

Thanks!

[J.A. Veil]

Nice John!

I have similar sized circle hooks (#10 I believe) and haven't had the success I expected with them on a regular basis (i.e. fish hooking themselves). I'm curious how you bait your hooks using shrimp etc, and even more curious how you rig them using the gulp? They are so small I'd imaging rigging gulp on with the normal way (running the hook inside the front and out the top) would be difficult....

Thanks!

If you don't get the bait on straight, it tends to spin, which in turn kinks up the snelled line leading to the bottom rig. With shrimp, it is tough to get a straight hooking. Even with Gulp, I had a hard time pushing the hook point into the Gulp material because the bend of the hook interferes. I pushed the hook point in about 1/4" then turned it to come out the other side (they were barely hooked). Fortunately, Gulp is much tougher than shrimp and stays on well even with a shallow hooking method.

I fished again in Cape May on my final morning. I visited one spot and caught a small croaker and bluefish. The bite was slow there so I returned to my Saturday spot. I caught 2 flounder, 3 black sea bass, 2 oyster toadfish in two hours of fishing. As soon as the tide stopped moving, the bite shut down.

[AbuMasgouf]

Thanks for the input John!