Friday, April 16, 2010

New Moon Striper



31 inches, about 13 pounds.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

New Moon Ramblings

Today, I brought my freshwater gear with me, ready to do battle with a Large Mouth bass, or perhaps a trout after work. Brought boots and some hip waders, and thought about shooting to one of several places for some evening fun. Here in the Pine Barrens, there are a lot of ponds and streams along the way to and from work. Not too many places for trout, but pickerel (all over), large mouth bass, and various panfish aplenty.

Things shape up nicely at work and I'm able to pull out of there just before 4PM, but I decide to head to a spot where herring should be running. Let's just say there's a church and a lake not far away. "Should be" is the operative word. Even though local fishermen are very tight lipped about their spots for herring, it is generally conceded by all that the runs up NJ rivers in recent years have been dismal. So much so that NJ Fish and Wildlife has lowered the daily per angler limit to 10, down from 35 (which was down from "unlimited" not too many years ago)!

So stop at one place and a fellow has a legal dip net, with a friend nearby. I start jigging some gold hooks and nothing is doing. We chat a bit on how it's going, the fellow showed me his home made dip net... sort of a converted crab trap with a gold flutter spoon in it, on a huge bamboo pole. But anyhow, I bid my farewells and moved on to the "lake". I was using a bobber with 3 gold hooks (well half of a store bought sabiki rig... and I pulled the feather off one of the hooks to give variety).

Nothing doing on herring, so put on a nice jointed pluf and start dredging this area for other customers.

Lo and behold I pick up a couple of crappie, one decent sized. These were firsts for me, I never caught a crappie before so I would have been happy with the day right there.



But there's more.

I note this would be a nice fly fishing spot, as there was some hatch going on and there were sporadic rises to whatever these bugs were. Would have been fun.

Anyhow, as I'm fishing I look at series of rapids coming into this spot and I see telltale signs of fish pushing up. Lots of them. Then I notice splashes in the shallows on the other side of the spillway I'm fishing. Lots of them. Gadzooks, those are herring!




So, I go over to the other side and without going into details I managed a couple of herring in 10 minutes or so... no doubt could have gotten more. But I had no livewell and I'm thinking 'what am I going to do with these'?

Well there is only one right answer... so I head home, call my wife and say 'honey, wanna hit the beach?' 'now?' 'yeah, I've got bait!' 'ok'. Note this will be her first time on Brigantine with me, and first time driving the beach in our Jeep together. I had only been out with this rig one other time (with our friend Tom) scouting around a few weeks ago around St. Patrick's day.

So she makes a take out dinner for us (salmon.. yum !! ) and I get home and pull out my rag tag surf gear for the first time this season. I'll go into that fiasco later, but suffice it to say, I was able to rig up one rod with a fishfinder and good hook to throw a head out, and another rod for chunking. All set.

We head down to Brigantine because I had been there, it was high tide, and I knew what to expect beach wise. I didn't want to mess with airing down on the short time schedule to hit the tide and time. Proved to be a good choice.

Went to the south jetty and there were a few guys there... likely wrapping up tog fishing (did I mention high tide and all that... and tog go to sleep at night... this was just around 7:45... sun had basically set but we still had good light)

Found a nice spot along the jetty (I was going to fish the cove on the inlet side of the jetty, not the pocket/ocean side), and pulled lights into it. Got my final rigging together and tossed a herring head out, set the rod in the rocks and then got the chunking rig ready. Tossed a chunk out and got in the car to eat, while watching.
My wife was saying how I never catch fish (I corrected her, that I don't bring home many fish for various reasons which I went over with her) and the chunk was in about 10 minutes when DOINK... I see the rod bend then release. I said ' that was no crab '.

So run out to check the bait, and for that rod I couldn't find a spot in the rocks to set it, so had it in a rod holder in the sand adjacent to the jetty. Pulled the rod out of the spike, walked up on the rocks and reeled in to check the bait. All ok. Cast out, walk the rod back to the sand spike and as I'm putting it in I feel something hitting (this had a 7/0 octopus circle on it). I pick the rod back up... walk back on the rocks, giving line and then reel tight and lift... fish on! Was a 29" slender striper. Maybe 8-9 lbs.

Got another chunk out, and the rod was out maybe 5 minutes when down it goes... fish on! A nicer fish, this one turned out to be about 31", maybe 13-14lbs. Nicer all around then the first.

I will say I have some nice fillets in the freezer right now.

There a whole story of getting the second fish in up the rocks, but suffice it to say I now see the usefulness of a jetty gaff (in short, I had to crawl down the rocks on my stomach to grab the fish, so I wouldn't fall and break something, for even though it was on 13-14lbs, I had pulled it into a "nook" in the rocks, then when I went to lift the leader, the fish came off and was in the nook... I crawled down and grabbed it in its gills then crawled back up).

Anyhow, turned into a fun, long, day.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Tax Time

tax time is coming.... be aware :D :D

Summer is coming

from summer of 2008, the "old" yankee stadium, 1st box, 1st base side:

Monday, April 5, 2010

Spring Fishing


Headed out for tautog on Saturday, however a southeast flow kept the air and water temps down in the 40s.

No fish, but a nice shakeout on a new boat.

Here's an old plug, from surfcast days of yore.

a pikie... a striper classic