Gr8ful Fish
06-13-2008, 04:01 PM
On Thurs. 6/12, Dan (Hammer4Reel) and my buddy, Al, jumped on board my "Bertha" for what we hoped would be an epic night of bassin' down the beach.
With a quick demonstration of his cast net skills, Dan loaded my livewell with ~70-80 livies and we headed around the hook and down the beach at about 6:00 PM. Unfortunately, when we stopped on brief birdplay around the Highlands bridge, we opened the livewell to find that the drainplug was not firmly seated, so I was left with a nearly dry livewell full of fresh deadies. :(
Not worrying, I kept us headed South while Dan fretted about bass that would only take livies without any interest in fresh dead. As I told Dan and Al, you can tell by username that I am a huge fan of the Dead ... and that includes both music and bunker. ;) :D
Once we ran a ways past the Red Church, we spotted our first pod of bunker and WE WERE ALL ALONE WITHOUT ANOTHER BOAT IN SIGHT! Yee Haw!!! :cool:
I started drifting whole live dead, while Dan and Al busied themselves by snagging live ones and sending them back out.
I scored first with a pair of big bluefish before Dan brought the first bass ~18 pounds to the boat on a live one. From that point on, just about every live bait that Dan and Al dropped was readily taken by a bass, but they either dropped the baits or ripped them free of the hook without getting hung.
At this point, I was really starting to worry that the livies were going to be our only hope for bass, and Dan was really beatin' on me to switch over to livelining. However, being the stuborn former Pennsyltuckian I am, I refused to listed and kept fishing "loafers.")
Eventually, the bunkers we were fishing started getting nervous, and we started seeing some fish blowing up on the bait. It was obvious the fish were there and hungry.
Al scored next with a big ~22 lbs. bass that we all got to watch repeatedly swat his live bait right at the side of the boat. You could almost sense the fish's frustration after 2-3 swipes, because when he finally nailed the bait, he violently shook it like a dog with a chew toy.:eek:
I finally got a good one using dead bait, and Dan hung a second on a loafer at the same time. Thank God, I wasn't going to live to regret my decision to stick with the dead baits. http://www.njfishing.com/forums/images/smilies/biggrin.gif
From that point on, the bite went gonzo with us scoring doubles hook-ups as quick as we could get baits into the water. At one point, we had a triple on, but unfortunately mine came unbuttoned. Al even managed to catch one on a spinning rod using a snagging rig as the bunker he was bringing in suddenly grew strong enough to peel drag.
It was an awesome night with about a dozen bass from 18 - 33 lbs., with the majority of the fish in the 20-25 pound class. We released all of them to hopefully provide others with the same thrills that we enjoyed in the future; we probably lost at least another 10 that simply pulled the hooks.
We called Dan's buddy, Joe on the "Sykk Physh" down to our drift, and we saw they instantly were into them as well.
As soon as the skies went dark, the bite shut down and we headed back home at 34 knots in perfectly flat calm seas.
Final score I believe was 8 on dead bait with 4 on live. Wheeeew!!!!
Pics to follow.
- Gr8ful
With a quick demonstration of his cast net skills, Dan loaded my livewell with ~70-80 livies and we headed around the hook and down the beach at about 6:00 PM. Unfortunately, when we stopped on brief birdplay around the Highlands bridge, we opened the livewell to find that the drainplug was not firmly seated, so I was left with a nearly dry livewell full of fresh deadies. :(
Not worrying, I kept us headed South while Dan fretted about bass that would only take livies without any interest in fresh dead. As I told Dan and Al, you can tell by username that I am a huge fan of the Dead ... and that includes both music and bunker. ;) :D
Once we ran a ways past the Red Church, we spotted our first pod of bunker and WE WERE ALL ALONE WITHOUT ANOTHER BOAT IN SIGHT! Yee Haw!!! :cool:
I started drifting whole live dead, while Dan and Al busied themselves by snagging live ones and sending them back out.
I scored first with a pair of big bluefish before Dan brought the first bass ~18 pounds to the boat on a live one. From that point on, just about every live bait that Dan and Al dropped was readily taken by a bass, but they either dropped the baits or ripped them free of the hook without getting hung.
At this point, I was really starting to worry that the livies were going to be our only hope for bass, and Dan was really beatin' on me to switch over to livelining. However, being the stuborn former Pennsyltuckian I am, I refused to listed and kept fishing "loafers.")
Eventually, the bunkers we were fishing started getting nervous, and we started seeing some fish blowing up on the bait. It was obvious the fish were there and hungry.
Al scored next with a big ~22 lbs. bass that we all got to watch repeatedly swat his live bait right at the side of the boat. You could almost sense the fish's frustration after 2-3 swipes, because when he finally nailed the bait, he violently shook it like a dog with a chew toy.:eek:
I finally got a good one using dead bait, and Dan hung a second on a loafer at the same time. Thank God, I wasn't going to live to regret my decision to stick with the dead baits. http://www.njfishing.com/forums/images/smilies/biggrin.gif
From that point on, the bite went gonzo with us scoring doubles hook-ups as quick as we could get baits into the water. At one point, we had a triple on, but unfortunately mine came unbuttoned. Al even managed to catch one on a spinning rod using a snagging rig as the bunker he was bringing in suddenly grew strong enough to peel drag.
It was an awesome night with about a dozen bass from 18 - 33 lbs., with the majority of the fish in the 20-25 pound class. We released all of them to hopefully provide others with the same thrills that we enjoyed in the future; we probably lost at least another 10 that simply pulled the hooks.
We called Dan's buddy, Joe on the "Sykk Physh" down to our drift, and we saw they instantly were into them as well.
As soon as the skies went dark, the bite shut down and we headed back home at 34 knots in perfectly flat calm seas.
Final score I believe was 8 on dead bait with 4 on live. Wheeeew!!!!
Pics to follow.
- Gr8ful