MISS BELMAR PRINCESS FIRST STRIPER OF THE SEASON

[missbelmar]

First striper of the season! Worked the beach this morning. Found the bunkers. Could see Striped Bass blowing them up. Had some quick actions with small blues, weakfish, herring and our 1st Striped Bass of the season! Unfortunately the wind💨 came up out the south at about 25mph. Which made fishing extremely difficult. We searched the north with only flighty birds🦅🦅.. made our way north to find bunkers galore. Bass were there. Lost 2 more.
Its Bass Season....
Keys to Success: please bring 2 spinner rods, 1 to snag and drop the bunker and 1 to cast a shad.
It will greatly increase your odds at catching a trophy bass when they are finicky.
The next few weeks should bring opportunities for everyon to catch a personal best! 🎣🦅😎😎💥💥

Come on out with us tomorrow!

The Royal Miss Belmar is sailing 1/2 Day for Seabass. The Miss Belmar Princess is sailing 3/4 Day for Blues and Stripers.

The Miss Belmar Princess is sailing daily for stripers and blues from 7:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.

The Royal Miss Belmar is sailing daily for sea bass from 7:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. and has whale watching trips daily from 1:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

We also have a Concert Cruise with LIVE bands on our boat! Check out our website missbelmar.com for our complete line up. Or you can give us a call at (732) 681-6866.

You can make a reservation on our website missbelmar.com, or you can give us a call at (732) 681-6866 and we would be more than happy to make one for you!

The Miss Belmar Princess is the largest, fastest and cleanest fishing boat in Belmar. With Miss Belmar's 3 engines and a total of 2,100 horsepower, she is the first boat to the fishing grounds every day and we guarantee it. No other boat comes close. Try us and you'll see why.

[Jigman13]

Hasn't snag and drop gone the way of the dodo now that circle hooks are the regs for stripers? I'd assume a bunker snagging treble is out of compliance, no?

[Papasown]

Great point Jigman. I have been using circle hooks for stripers for several years, and when I snag a bunker on a treble snag hook, I would have a second conventional rod set up with the circle hook and a 2 oz. bank sinker on a fish finder to take the bunker deep. I have been considering using the same method this year also. Hope that will be the acceptable method. Best to you this season. Catch 'em up...............Papa

[tjd24]

Originally Posted by Jigman13

Hasn't snag and drop gone the way of the dodo now that circle hooks are the regs for stripers? I'd assume a bunker snagging treble is out of compliance, no?

YUP !
In-line (Non-Offset) Circles hooks are the Law now.

[Ol Pedro]

You can still snag Bunker but you can't use the treble to fish for Stripers. Get the bait to the boat and set it back on another rod with a straight circle hook.

[AndyS]

So it should say bring 3 rods, 1 to snag bunker with, another with a circle hook on it and a 3rd with a Storm Shad on it.

[Ol Pedro]

Originally Posted by AndyS

So it should say bring 3 rods, 1 to snag bunker with, another with a circle hook on it and a 3rd with a Storm Shad on it.

You could multitask by using your snag rod for your shad rod.

Another option which works great. One spinning or conventional outfit with 50 lb braid to a 50 lb barrel swivel to a 2 - 3 ft section of 30 lb fluoro with a 50lb snap swivel.

Use the weighted snag to get bait. Have a 9/0 circle in your pocket and have a slide rig that opens and allows you to wrap the slide around the line above the barrel with whatever weight you need to get it down if you want to fish livies. When you reel in, remove the snag from the snap, replace with circle, put your slide on above the barrel, hook your livey and drop her down. No retying needed.

What I've had way more luck with is forego the weight. Cut the bunker into three pieces, head, mid section and tail. Tail is light and hard to cast plus not much meat so normally discard as sort of chum. The mid section weights more and you'll get further distance casting and has produced best, head is real good too. Have a bucket by your side, cut snagged bunker and leave in bucket so you don't get blood all over the deck. Remove snap and replace with circle. Hook midsection (if used) at top through spine, head section through nostril or at top of head. No weight, just toss into school of bunkers and let sink.

You can use the same rod to put a shad on, just clip it to the snap.
One rod, three different ways to fish it which should take no more than 30 seconds to change based on the technique you want to use. Have caught more big fish letting a chunk sink in the middle of a bunker school than using livies.

When bass are blowing up schools of bunker, sometimes a livey gets lost with the other thousands of baits. Let a cut section drop down to the bass under the school, you'd be amazed how often it works over fishing livies. It imitates a bunker cut in half by a bluefish and larger lazier more opportunistic bass will wait for those half pieces to come to them. You'll also have a lot less rods at the rail.

Fished this set up for years, works like a charm. And as Jigman pointed out, snag rigs fished for bass are illegal and even if you released the fish using one eventually that fish will more likely than not die.

[Detour66]

Originally Posted by dakota560

Another option which works great. One spinning or conventional outfit with 50 lb braid to a 50 lb barrel swivel to a 2 - 3 ft section of 30 lb fluoro with a 50lb snap swivel.

Use the weighted snag to get bait. Have a 9/0 circle in your pocket and have a slide rig that opens and allows you to wrap the slide around the line above the barrel with whatever weight you need to get it down if you want to fish livies. When you reel in, remove the snag from the snap, replace with circle, put your slide on above the barrel, hook your livey and drop her down. No retying needed.

What I've had way more luck with is forego the weight. Cut the bunker into three pieces, head, mid section and tail. Tail is light and hard to cast plus not much meat so normally discard as sort of chum. The mid section weights more and you'll get further distance casting and has produced best, head is real good too. Have a bucket by your side, cut snagged bunker and leave in bucket so you don't get blood all over the deck. Remove snap and replace with circle. Hook midsection (if used) at top through spine, head section through nostril or at top of head. No weight, just toss into school of bunkers and let sink.

You can use the same rod to put a shad on, just clip it to the snap.
One rod, three different ways to fish it which should take no more than 30 seconds to change based on the technique you want to use. Have caught more big fish letting a chunk sink in the middle of a bunker school than using livies.

When bass are blowing up schools of bunker, sometimes a livey gets lost with the other thousands of baits. Let a cut section drop down to the bass under the school, you'd be amazed how often it works over fishing livies. It imitates a bunker cut in half by a bluefish and larger lazier more opportunistic bass will wait for those half pieces to come to them. You'll also have a lot less rods at the rail.

Fished this set up for years, works like a charm. And as Jigman pointed out, snag rigs fished for bass are illegal and even if you released the fish using one eventually that fish will more likely than not die.

this makes sense to me. I was never a fan of snagging a bunker with a treble hook and then casting it back in to catch a bass since I C&R all my bass. If I kept the fish then it really doesn't matter. Tight lines!