NJFishing.com Your Best Online Source for Fishing Information in New Jersey - Reel Class Tuesday 8/19 Bonito

Today we had our longtime customer Dave Fischer split a charter with my mate Joe's dad. Our plan was to fish early for bonito then switch to fluke.

Ran out to where we've been catching the bones - it was NG. Green water and just a handful of pee-wee bluefish.

We then ran off to another spot where I heard the bite was good. Water was cleaner so we put the trolling spread out and once we got to the spot we were immediately tripled up. As the guys were reeling in the fish I threw some chum in the water, and told the other guys to get baits in, and they were immediately hooked up.

At this point the bonito were schooled up right at the boat, so we threw the hook in, continued chumming, and proceeded to destroy the bonito for 2.5 hours on light spinning rods with both bait and small metals. Fishing was simply insane as we usually had at least 2 on at a time, and at many points we had 3 + guys hooked up with 3-5# bonito. This was the BEST bonito fishing I've ever seen in my life - it was insanity!!

After hooking nearly 100 of these fish, we decided to switch gears and look for mahi. A bait switch with Capt Freddy from Andrea's toy got us some chunks so we went looking. Mahi fishing was NG on the pots, we only got 1 and saw just a few.

We finished up fluking right outside our inlet and had 2 keepers and a few shorts in an hour or so.

For the day we had somewhere between 75-100 bonito, kept 45 or 50, and had the 1 mahi and 2 fluke. We also donated a handful of the bones to Clark's Landing "Fishing For the Cause" fundraiser for breast cancer awareness. It was a great day with awesome weather and a great crew!!!!