Keyport Seahawk - Big Knuckle Head!

[Chrisper4694]

Headed out with John who brought his son along for some sea bass/bottom fishing with hopes of running into some migrating stripers. At times i felt like the little guy was purposely just trying to annoy the living hell out of his dad but i think he still had a good time haha.

We saw some surface commotion on the way out in the bay but my popper could only get a near miss swipe...looked like a small striper, not sure but that was it. Once we got around the hook birds seemed to be starting to form and dive a couple of times but every single time...boat would plow through them oblivious...still makes me shake my head.

We did a little bit of drifting/bucktailing pulling in a bunch of fluke up to 17.5" no keepers and some large sundials. The wind started picking up so we anchored up and started waiting out the bregals and start pulling in seabass with a decent pick of keepers in the mix.

When little J wasn't busy annoying his papa John, he pulled in a few fish all by himself! Dogfish would take over every now and then in swarms. We even had a decent ling in the mix. Unfortunately no stripers every showed up for us, but it was a good day until we were completely blown off the water by around 2-3pm haha.

The fish of the day, though, was a monster 23.5" blue masked, knuckleheaded seabass! I'll tell you what it hit, but you probably wont believe me...I was chucking huge bunker swimbait for striped bass at one of the spots and this beast slammed it half down it's throat haha. Biggest one i've ever caught!

[reason162]

That is a pig cbass, esp for Jersey! Not surprised at all you caught it on a swimbait, the big ones will chase down bunker/sandeels all day. Great job!

Chris...good job! They don't get that big eating small baits! They can be very aggressive fish when they're hungry. Remember we were all "Little J's" at one time and no doubt when things got a little slow we tested everyone's patience on board. It's the best time father and son can spend together in their lifetime.....at least in my book! Looks like you had a fun trip with a lot of action even if the stripers didn't show up.

[JDTuna]

Monster seabass on the swimshad!

[SaltLife1980]

Nice knuckle head there!

[Blackfish Doug]

Nice fish I much rather eat that Sea Bass then those sewer trout

[bunker dunker]

congrats Chris,nice sae bass.

[Jigman13]

That's a solid sea bass man. Would make a cool mount... Or just gut, scale and roast it whole!!!

[Hunter 2]

Nice fish, good to see ya out there too.