FISH TANK - Weekend Recap and FSOS Tourney Update - NJFishing.com Your Best Online Source for Fishing Information in New Jersey

Fish Tank · #1 08-18-2014, 01:15 PM

Hey gang. Sorry for the late updates, but we have been out fishing all weekend and on our downtime, tried getting a few hours of sleep.

On Sat, Capt. Tommy and I put together another all start crew for the FSOS Fluke Tournament including Henry, Scott, John F, Ed, Big Ed and Kevin. We decided to go back to where we have been having decent success the past few weeks.

We shoved off under the cover of darkness and had lines in around 5:45am. The first couple of hours were uneventful except for a 7+lb stargazer caught by yours truely

It was the biggest one any of us have ever seen, so Kevin went on his phone to see if we had a state record, but to our suprise, that belonged to a 13lber.

Anyways, we weren't happy where we were so made a short run and finally started to put a few fish in the boat. Around 11:30, and 8 fish in the box, we joined the fleet down south and picked a couple of fish with the biggest going almost 6lbs. It was nice to finally see a decent size fish come up, but we knew we had to do better to find something for the scales so off we went again to another area all by ourselves.

The action was good in this area, but the size was not too impressive. That was until Ed hooks into a nice one that bent his rod in half. One of the guys thought he had bottom, but I saw some shake and dropped everything to grab the net. Just as the fish is almost to the surface, some idiot comes screaming by right off our stern and left a good 4-5' wake that crashed into our transom. Despite the boat getting rocked, Ed kept his focus and we were able to scoop the fish and slap him on the deck. We knew that this one was certainly worth weighing in, so we made one last drift so as to make it back to the weigh in on time.

After arriving at the weigh station around 2pm, we were happy to hear the fish went 8.39lbs. A few of us went back to the FSOS for the BBQ and awards ceremony (which was awesome by the way) and we were pleased to see that we made 3rd place on the leaderboard. It was also great meeting some of the other captains and fisherman there. Can't wait to do it again next year!

On Sun, Capt. Ed and I hosted the Jeff Gheraldi charter with a bunch of his long-time friends. We thought it was going to be a long day when 2 of them showed up with surf rods and another one had a rod so light I wouldn't even use it to catch crappies in a pond, but they were real troopers and absolutely a blast to hang out with.

We started offshore where we left em biting on Sat, but the dogfish took over the area big time so we had to make a move. We started to fish some stickier stuff and had a few fish come up, but nothing worth writing home about.

On the way to our next destination we stopped off at one of our favorite bottom fishing spots and threw the hook. We had a good pick of ling, sea bass and fluke which kept everyone's rod bent. One of the guys wasn't feeling so hot so we headed inshore to finish up the day and had good action with fluke up to 16". Even though it was a tough day for keepers, the crew hung in there and had a great time and Capt. Ed and I shared a lot of laughs with them. Finaly tally was 3 fluke up to around 4lbs, half a dozen jumbo sea bass and a couple of ling.

On another note, we want to wish our very own Capt. Tommy Joseph a happy birthday! We hope you have a great day.

~Capt. Kevin