JBird
11-15-2013, 07:32 PM
We found fish right away and the first few drifts we caught a decent amount of keepers, a lot of shorts and the blues were biting too. All day was pretty much the same, running from one spot to the next banging away between a few lulls here and there. Most keepers were 28-30 inch fish but the pool fish that Victor had on the last drift went 18 lbs. Nice job!
My 2 cents for the day: If you line and rod are too light to handle swinging a 22 inch striper or 4-5 lb bluefish over the rail of a party boat then, in my humble opinion, it's too light for party boat jig fishing. I LOVE light tackle but Fall jigging stripers on a party boat is not the best place for it.
Small shorts and smaller unwanted bluefish need to be flipped in the boat, especially if there are keeper bass coming up at the same time.
Let the mates show you the best method of doing this if you don't know how to do it safely.
If you insist on the lighter tackle than tie on a top shot of leader line heavy enough to handle hand lining a fish over the rail and long enough to reach from the deck. 30 lb minimum but I think 40lb is better. We've used 50-60 lb with great success before with no noticeable difference in hooking bass over lighter "less visible" leader.
Yesterday I was coming in from a Tog trip on a friends boat and we saw birds going nuts so we stopped on them. I was flipping 34 inch bass in with a 50 lb top shot I had on my Tog stick. The bass weren't leader shy either as I had 5 keepers in less than 30 minutes. Just something to think about.
The weather looks fantastic tomorrow so come down and get some!
My 2 cents for the day: If you line and rod are too light to handle swinging a 22 inch striper or 4-5 lb bluefish over the rail of a party boat then, in my humble opinion, it's too light for party boat jig fishing. I LOVE light tackle but Fall jigging stripers on a party boat is not the best place for it.
Small shorts and smaller unwanted bluefish need to be flipped in the boat, especially if there are keeper bass coming up at the same time.
Let the mates show you the best method of doing this if you don't know how to do it safely.
If you insist on the lighter tackle than tie on a top shot of leader line heavy enough to handle hand lining a fish over the rail and long enough to reach from the deck. 30 lb minimum but I think 40lb is better. We've used 50-60 lb with great success before with no noticeable difference in hooking bass over lighter "less visible" leader.
Yesterday I was coming in from a Tog trip on a friends boat and we saw birds going nuts so we stopped on them. I was flipping 34 inch bass in with a 50 lb top shot I had on my Tog stick. The bass weren't leader shy either as I had 5 keepers in less than 30 minutes. Just something to think about.
The weather looks fantastic tomorrow so come down and get some!