Fluke trip to NJ 7/25

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Trying to avoid the combat fishing on a packed head boat, I and a friend trailered my boat down to NJ for a change. Left just before midnight and arrived around 4 so we made pretty good time.. Weather was awful to start.. Ominous blackish gray skies , looked like tornado skies. After about 1/2 hours a nasty south wind started, and it started raining sideways. We got a keeper straight off on a peanut bunker near the green can, and were hopeful, but that was short lived.. Started moving around, went outside but it was mostly shorts and birds.. Saw bird frenzies in a few places, with bait going crazy jumping and seemingly being harrassed, but we could not get a hit on our AVA jigs, and neither could anyone else in other boats.. The jigs might have had the wrong profile.. Anyway we fished hard from 6 am to about noon [by which time the weather became bright and HOT, with a lot less wind], and we got a total of 2 keepers , one on a peanut, one on a peruvian smelt.. Finished the day at the bug light in shallow water under 20 feet, and were catching a lot of fluke , but they were all shorts.. By that time the "good bait" was gone and all we had left were a few small stinkin squid remnants, but the smaller fluke loved it.. We actually ran out of bait... Gulp did nothing at all for me except birds.. I started with a 2 oz Spro w/ Chartreuse Gulp mullet, and a trailer hook with Gulp.. Birds were nailing the trailer Gulp, not the jig, and Fluke would have none of it.. Drop down a peanut or smelt, and fluke tagged it fast. Just too many shorts..The smooth dogs were fierce and relentless. NEVER saw this many dogs in all my years of fluke fishing .We could not keep them off our rigs... Damn things, its like trying to take your hook out of a snow tire. For some reason we saw a lot of blue crabs swimming on the surface out in the ocean a few miles,, Can't say I have seen that before in the ocean, just in the bays and rivers.. Got nailed by some horrifying storms going home as we drove through the hills and mountains of Pennsylvania...
Brought home a half dozen Sea Robins besides the fluke.. Fried some up today.. Pretty good as some of you know. Not as good as fluke, but better than some other fish that are regularly taken home to eat. I like them better the porgies any day.. In any case, it was nice to take my own boat out for a change. Just not that easy to do considering the distances involved.. Also a shout out to Fishermens Den North.. The peanut bunker were super duper fresh.. NOT frozen,NO stink, no softness.. We were told they were just netted a few hours previous, and thats how it looked to us.. The fish loved them, my only regret is that we didn't buy more.. We may have gotten another keeper or two... bob