Pompano? Permit? Crevelle Jack?

[shresearchdude]

Hello All,

We were out trawling yesterday for Skates for a research project in our 48 Ft "Nauvoo"when we passed by three large schools of "something" about 1/8 mile off the Highlands Bridge @2pm

I didn't have a fishing pole with me so I can't tell you exactly what they were. Three schools of tightly packed fish. Probably numbered in the hundreds to thousands and they seemed to be at least several pounds in size.
:eek: pretty cool to see!!!!


We caught Skates.

Keep fishin with squid or imitations that are 4-6"-they were in every trawl.

The larger Fluke we netted were down by Sea Bright in about 20-30ft of water. There were big rainfish in the same zone with some birds indicating feeding fish right off the beaches in the same area.

[CatchEmUp]

I'd gladly take any of the three, which are all still on my bucket list

[strip bait]

And they will call them.................bunker

[Dino]

Definitely a school of 1000 permit off the highlands bridge. U nailed it this time :D

[Dino]

Kidding... those were prob bunkers

[NoLimit]

Thank you for that excellent report!

[makosnax]

Was in that exact spot on saturday. They were bunker and they were getting blasted. Couldnt tell what was eating them but it looked like more of a bass bite than bluefish. They were balled as tight as could possibly be with the occasional explosion.

[shresearchdude]

Sorry fellas...

I'm not saying what you saw were NOT bunker. But I'm a trained professional and I've had both in tanks and....








whatever...

I will defer to the experts

[tautog]

I would bet the farm they weren't any of those. Big enough to be black drum?

[Billfish715]

Two weeks ago there were jacks caught around IBSP. A few years ago, we chased them around off Bay Head. They were great fun on small jigs and light spinning rods. My information is that the size of these fish now is larger than the ones we caught then. The water clarity is pretty nice and there are rainfish showing up more and more. My guess is that the fish were jacks. I've never seen them in numbers like you're describing, however. With that many around, someone will hook one and we'll have a better idea.

[dfish28]

Schools of baby drum...

[Gerry Zagorski]

Coney Island White Fish ;)

All kidding aside, was running back home underway and we marked more then a few very tight bait balls along the way... A few around the False Hook Channel and a ton inside the hook to the navy peer. Haven't seen anything like that on the fish finder all summer... This is the typical time of year for the anchovies to show up so I'm think that's what we marked. Would be nice to see what's feeding on them but we were too pooped to stop and check it out.

[Dino]

sh research dude,

when you say tightly packed schools.. were they swimming in a circular direction? right on the surface? flipping and finning ?

maybe they weren't bunkers. this is the time of year weird stuff shows up so who knows ..

just feel like if it was a large group of jacks or something, someone would have caught a few and they would show up in reports and on message boards. sounds lot like school of big adult bunkers

[Reelron]

2-3 years ago there were small Jacks chasing spearing inside Monmouth Cove Marina. Could be Jacks? Would love to find out!