Bottom fish beatdown - NJFishing.com Your Best Online Source for Fishing Information in New Jersey

CubasFinest12 · #1 07-03-2016, 05:30 PM

With my boat getting its 100hr service, I was lucky enough to hop aboard my buddies boat in search of some good eats. First drop of the day was on the sandy hook reef. Dropped clams down and had tons of bites, however we couldn't keep the blackfish off our hooks. We put gulp on and finally were able to get past those pesky tog and get to our seabass. I hope these big blackfish are still in the mood to chew on July 17th! Next stop was out in the mud hole in search of some ling flounder and cod. All we found out there was a mess of ling with a sprinkling of big seabass (vented and released) No flounder and no cod, however there were no eels and no dogs, so there is nothing to complain about! Caught about 40 ling and went in search of the porgies that have showed up in our area. Read huge mounds of them but couldn't get them to bite! Very frustrating. At this time the South wind began picking up and we had a long run ahead of us back to keyporT along with a lot of filleting to do.

Ling jumped all over the bergal strips today, strips out fished clams 4-1 and the size difference was very noticeable.
Ling were mostly mediums with the occasional little runt, meat strips caught most fish, and the biggest.
Since tog muscled the seabass off the clams, we used 4inch gulp mullets in pink. That seemed to get the job done
The tog were extremely aggressive and were very large, all thick fat fish to 6.5 pounds. I believe we caught more keeper blackfish while drifting than we did keeper seabass.....

SNAPS · #2 07-03-2016, 06:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CubasFinest12

With my boat getting its 100hr service, I was lucky enough to hop aboard my buddies boat in search of some good eats. First drop of the day was on the sandy hook reef. Dropped clams down and had tons of bites, however we couldn't keep the blackfish off our hooks. We put gulp on and finally were able to get past those pesky tog and get to our seabass. I hope these big blackfish are still in the mood to chew on July 17th! Next stop was out in the mud hole in search of some ling flounder and cod. All we found out there was a mess of ling with a sprinkling of big seabass (vented and released) No flounder and no cod, however there were no eels and no dogs, so there is nothing to complain about! Caught about 40 ling and went in search of the porgies that have showed up in our area. Read huge mounds of them but couldn't get them to bite! Very frustrating. At this time the South wind began picking up and we had a long run ahead of us back to keyporT along with a lot of filleting to do.

Ling jumped all over the bergal strips today, strips out fished clams 4-1 and the size difference was very noticeable.
Ling were mostly mediums with the occasional little runt, meat strips caught most fish, and the biggest.
Since tog muscled the seabass off the clams, we used 4inch gulp mullets in pink. That seemed to get the job done
The tog were extremely aggressive and were very large, all thick fat fish to 6.5 pounds. I believe we caught more keeper blackfish while drifting than we did keeper seabass.....

hope you marked those tog spots.

Duffman · #3 07-03-2016, 06:59 PM

Nice trip! Figures, tog biting hard when regs say NO!!!

Blackfish Doug · #4 07-03-2016, 07:28 PM

It's good to leave those blackfish alone all the females are full of roe. I know you were not targeting blackfish so please don't take this the wrong way. In a few weeks they should be done with their spawn. Being it's only 1 fish try not to keep the females if you can tell the difference. As much as I hate the regs I do respect the fish I'm sure most do know the difference. You can do what you like with the 1 fish but it should not be too hard to get your 1 male trophy fish most of the males are big anyway.

SaltLife1980 · #5 07-03-2016, 09:51 PM

Good to hear. Dad and I are heading to the mud hole tomorrow for some ling, cod, and flounder. See what we get

CubasFinest12 · #6 07-04-2016, 08:09 AM

Doug- Some of these fish were already spawned out actually, some were full of eggs don't get me wrong but there was a few with empty egg pouches. We are toggaholics on my boat, we only keep fish 15-19 inches and even when it's a 6 fish per man limit we rarely keep more than 3 per guy unless friends and family are begging for fresh fish.

Saltlife- catch them up bud, highly suggest filleting the first bergals you guys get and using strips of them as bait. Plain and simple got the job done for us.

Blackfish Doug · #7 07-04-2016, 08:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CubasFinest12

Doug- Some of these fish were already spawned out actually, some were full of eggs don't get me wrong but there was a few with empty egg pouches. We are toggaholics on my boat, we only keep fish 15-19 inches and even when it's a 6 fish per man limit we rarely keep more than 3 per guy unless friends and family are begging for fresh fish.

Saltlife- catch them up bud, highly suggest filleting the first bergals you guys get and using strips of them as bait. Plain and simple got the job done for us.

That's great to know the last couple that I caught accidentally while Ling fishing were full of roe & returned unharmed by me. Usually during the summer I wont keep the females anyway. If you or anybody else catch's any when in season wants to keep them so be it. I'm the furthest thing from a tree hugger so keep the legal fish but I like the fact that you keep only what you need.