[bulletbob]

The Weakfishing with plastic worm/sandworm in the Reach was good back in the early 90's no doubt... however, 10 years earlier between the channels, you needed NO bait, just a tiger tail. This was sunset into the night fishing. Drop it down, rod in holder, no action needed other than the drifting boat, and you were into massive tide runners one after another,,, Seldom anything less than 6 pounds, with some as big as 12 or 13, and all you could carry.. Sadly a lot of guys carried a hundred home time after time....


Flounder fishing right off Union beach where I lived... Just drop the anchor, bat a few bank mussels around the boat and in minutes an all out blitz of flounder unlike anything one could imagine these days in only 10 foot of water right off the beach a few hundred feet.. BIG, a 12 incher was a baby, and lots of 18 inchers.. Some huge yellowtails mixed in as well.. Never saw school stripers in those days when flounder fishing in those days like we see today.

Fishing a wreck right in Raritan/Sandy Hook bay, somewhere out past Raritan Reach. No one knew about that wreck, I don't think it was all that big, but a guy from his marina gave my friend the loran number one time in around 82 or 83.. We hit it and it was a motherlode of massive tog right in the bay with boats all around us unaware.. Huge blacks one after another till we ran out of greens, and then a few more on whatever legs, shell fragments we could scrape off the floor of the boat... Got a massive Trigger there as well.. I don't think that wreck exists any more, or it might be covered, but it was like nothing I had ever seen the one time I fished it.

Also remember lights out blackfishing in lovely sept/oct weather in shirt sleeves on sunny calm afternoons, and if you had a decent arm you could skip a rock to the shoreline from where we were fishing in pretty shallow water, 30 feet or less off the Red Church in Llberon... No limits, either bag or size, Plenty of room for all, and the fish were always there spring and fall.. No freezing your ass off in ""backfish weather"".. blackfish weather in those days was a gorgeous sunny early October day, in the mid 60's..Then one day, someone found out that blackfish were good to eat raw with soy sauce and maybe some thinly sliced daikon, and we are where we are today..

Fluke fishing where it was just non stop all day, until your arms hurt and you just had enough and wanted to leave, and all you need was a cheap ass box of squid.. want a doormat?.. Leave the rig as is, except for a massive hook, and put a whole squid on... When the fluke started to get annoying, move to where the boats we clustered and mohawking blues.. usually not monsters, but decent fish 2-5 pounds, and they showed somewhere almost every time we went for fluke, sometimes you would see the birds on the horizon, other times, they were destroying your squid strips, and cutting your hooks and you simply tied on an AVA right where you were fluking, beat them up for a while, and then when they moved off, went back to fluke which were always ready to hit after the blues were gone...


Whiting and Ling that were ALWAYS there in massive numbers, all winter every winter year after year, until one sad day, they weren't. Started in november usually, and typically lasted until the water went below 39 degrees.. That number was given to me by a wise old head boat captain, and many years ago, I kept an eye on coastal temps and he was pretty close.. Mild years the fishing lasted all winter,, Some years it slowed in late January, but was gangbusters again by april.. A partyboat might go down for a month back then, but never for 4 months unless thats what the captain wanted...

i recall when the Atlantic Highland boats all ran all winter, as there were plenty of winter fish to catch, and then in march they started fishing the river for flounder... The ONLY thing that stopped them was when the bay froze to the point where they simply could not get out... I DO recall ice on the bay one weekend, but one of the boats broke it for the others on the way out.. Might have been the Super Cat or the old Sea Fox, can't really recall the boat but I do remember it happening...

I remember fishing the shrewsbury river and if nothing else was around, the eels would bite all day every day, until you got really sick of looking at them and handling them.. they were there by the millions and millions. It was like a plague.. until one day they weren't... I wish i could go back... Or at very least i wish the fish would come back... bob