Stripers and Bluefish and Fluke...
First, shop news.
This coming Sunday is the New Jersey Governor’s Tournament on Island Beach State Park. For those who want to participate, information can be found here, including a link to sign up. We will be open special hours for the tournament. The actual hours are still to be determined. We will announce the special hours when we have them through our Instagram and Facebook accounts, and in our Thursday night fishing report.
No new items at this time, but we did have a couple of restocks. If you have been waiting for the DNG Tackle Dividers to be available, they are now. Also, we reloaded on Trailhead Tire Deflators for those waiting on them.
For the fishing, I am going to sound like a broken record. It hasn’t really changed since our last report, so for those who read the last report, this will sound familiar.
The fishing locally remains good. The striped bass bite on clams in the surf is still the best option around. We’ve been hearing a few larger bass have been taken on bunker. Bluefish in the surf are also hitting bunker and swimming plugs (SP Minnows and Hydro Minnows). If you want to catch a bass on an artificial lure, you can, but you need to go in the dark.
In the bay, bluefish are still hitting poppers for the anglers on boats. They are also taking soft plastics. If you want to fish a soft plastic for bluefish, the Z-Man DieZel Minnows are the closest you will come to bluefish proof with a soft plastic lure. Those fishing the local piers are getting some nice bluefish on bunker.
The fluke are biting in the back bay. Bucktails and Gulp! are taking those. We have also seen some fluke taken off the beach, and heard some rumors of some ocean-caught fish off of boats.
Some recent notable catches:
@d.shelkin is reporting some action on artificial lures.
@codypiff says thanks for the clams
Pedro from @keptifishing on them throwing the Grumpy’s Snot. Check out his video blogs at Kepti Fishin on YouTube.
Little Scarlett is on them again! She out fished her dad @seansmida this morning with fluke to 22 inches on Berkley Gulp! and S&S Bucktails Fluke Nuke’m Jigs.
Our own online sales guy got into the fluke too, using Z-Man DieZel Minnows on Z-Man Redfish eye jig heads with a douse of Pro-Cure Founder Pounder scent.
@shell_e._caris and his crew crushed the bluefish this morning locally. They said the soft plastics were really producing so make sure you grab some topwater poppers and soft plastics
Nice fish in the area right now. Here’s Maxine’s first Striper ever! 40” on fresh bunker. Maxine and her crew also got a 36 inch bass, a short bass and a nice bluefish. Congrats Maxine!
Our own Scott and his crew of hooligans got out Sunday evening for a nice bite of blues. This one took a Yo-Zuri mag popper.
Jeff Camerato got a 5.75# 25" blue on a Tsunami Talking Popper in the bay.
Vince Migliaccio with a 29” 9.85 lb bass caught on salted clams in the Surf. He also reported losing two gator blues on the Clams as well.
Robert Flynn with a 48” slob caught off the surf.
We are going to give Ray a break today. We mentioned before that Scott got into bluefish with his crew. They all caught, except one, who was not having a good time with it. We are going to let him save face and won’t name him here, as he has been the brunt of other jokes the past month and his skin has grown a little thin. We do imagine, however, that when he and Scott got back to their vehicles, it went something like this:
Also, another note: When swapping Scott’s face with Radko Gudas’ face, the picture doesn’t change much at all. Long lost twins maybe?