Glory Days Let's Hear Em

[frugalfisherman]

Nobody mentioned blowfish. Fishing of the railroad bridge between Brielle and PP you could catch all you wanted in the early 60's. Of course now there are no trespassing signs.

[Skolmann]

-LBI circa 1976, massive school of bluefish in the #7-12 class push a school of bait fish into the beach at high and get trapped by a sandbar when the tide drops. Bite lasted for hours, guys catching well over 100 (some released, some not) on anything you threw.

-March 1996 my best friend and I did a bluefin charter out of Cape Hatterass Marina. We brought 18 bluefin (12 for me, 6 for him as he eventually felt the effects of a big sea) to the boat from an estimated #185-325...kept our limit of one and tagged/released the rest. One the way in we trolled up black fin tuna & king mackerel.

-Halloween mid 2000’s, on a non sponsors boat out of Leonardo we had non stop action anchored in the middle of nowhere with striped bass...nothing under 38”s. We’re tight on bass before the anchor was tight.Literally we would flip our clam bait out from the stern/starboard corner and as soon as the boat got in the zone you were hooked up...took a step our a left and fought the fish, while the next guy casted out, once the fish was close we took another step to the left and the fish was netted...you repaired and got back in line. Went on like this for 4 hours.

-Afternoon live lining trip in Raritan Bay, left with a full well of live bunker..found a school of bass (nothing giant #17-30)...went through a full live well of bait in short order..reloaded on bait...went back to the spot and again went through a full live well of bait...did this another 2 times. Bass would hit the bunker within 30 seconds of being in the water, even fresh dead bunker drifted out produced a bite....4 man charter put well over 200 bass (only keeping a 4 man limit) in the boat.

-Fluke fishing in the Manasaquan River aboard the Reel Class, I caught over 110 fluke bucktailing on a 6 hour trip..no keepers but when using trout gear even the shorts put on a good show.

-As mentioned the Raritan Bay weakfish bite was epic at times.

-April 2015 fishing the Marathon Hump, we fished live pilchards on medium spinning gear and crushed the black fin tuna to #25.

-Late March a few years ago (when we had that very early stripper & bluefish jig bite. Jason and I were aboard the Golden Eagle, we each got our two keeper bass on our first two drops..we proceeded to catch a few more bass while also filling 2.5 garbage barrels with bluefish


Those are just the ones that come to mind off the top of my head.

[june181901]

Fishing on the Viking 2 out of Princess Bay. I'd come home on leave and my buddy and I would go there from Bayonne. We'd fill two burlap bags with whiting and ling, bring them back to Slim's Cafe in Bayonne and hand them out to the guys who hung around there. Also recall on those trips the boats from Belford selling lobsters for .50 cents as they would pull along side the Viking.Winter of '65 was the last time we did that.

[Capt Sal]

Shorts?

[Reel Class]

Originally Posted by frugalfisherman

Nobody mentioned blowfish. Fishing of the railroad bridge between Brielle and PP you could catch all you wanted in the early 60's. Of course now there are no trespassing signs.

Bruce, there are still tons of blowfish around there just aren't many in the river. Barnegat Bay was absolutely loaded for 2 months last summer. We even caught lots of them in some of the creeks where the crabs are. I'm not sure why there aren't many in the river anymore though.

[Reel Class]

EMCJIM you also made me remember something else...

It was late September of 1990 and my dad and I hopped on the Norma-K II for an afternoon bluefish trip. We chugged out to the Manasquan Ridge, dropped the hook in and started chumming. JUMBO blues were coming up in minutes and we were all getting our asses kicked with 15-20# GATORS. Breaking them off, fighting them, etc. Bonito and albies were in the mix, and believe it or not, a few small schoolie bluefin tuna even made it to the boat. We were 6 miles off the beach, slaughtering these things and even had a couple tuna - amazing. This was around the time the mud hole tuna bite was slowing so it was really cool. I was 14 at the time and was amazed THEN. Great memories.