8/29 Stripers and Fluke

Had a Charter today, the guys said they wanted Stripers, and were hoping for a slot or 2 to take home. Winds out of the Northeast had me a little unsure if we'd be able to run around comfortably, but also had me pretty sure we would find some fish on the chew.

We left from Allen Harbor around sunrise and did hit a little slop but stayed mostly dry, we ran out to Beavertail first and started throwing a variety of artificials. First hour, we had a few bites, losing 2 jigs to Bluefish, and nothing in the boat. I've been fishing Beavertail pretty regularly and while I never crush the fish here I usually can get a few bites, and find that the ratio of slots to shorts/overs is pretty good. With the first hour behind us, I figured we'd better move, and we went over to Newport to hopefully actually put some fish in the boat. It was very nice to hookup within the first 2 minutes in Newport, trolling a tube, which turned out to be a Bass in the 40" class. We trolled around and got 3 more Bass all about 40" and one Bluefish around 7lbs. Not terrible, though with these guys wanting to take some fish home for dinner, and no surface activity to try to pull a slot from, we transitioned to Flukin.

The Bass bite wasn't anything too crazy, good size, and pretty cooperative, but still had to work for them. We went up inside the west passage and tried our luck on the Fluke, and in 2 hours we caught 3 nice keepers all 21"-23" on standard drag rigs with sea robin strips. We caught another dozen short Fluke, one being borderline keeper size which we had to let go, as they do not get bigger once they go into the cooler, they only get smaller.

So with that, a 6 hour morning trip, we got into some slow and steady action with enough meat for a few meals, these guys were happy, and so was I, as I really haven't been having the best luck inshore lately. Some days, its great, a lot of days though, its not that great. This was somewhere in between, but was certainly good enough. In other news, I need a new phone, as my pictures I take turn out very foggy with my cracked camera lens.