what happened to all the glowing claw reports

[David599]

Better late than never. We We ended up at the Claw departing Manasquan 130 pm for the 78 mile ride. It was flat calm and super nice. Left Tuesday after the crowds left 2 Sep.

Arrived at Claw 600 pm to three boats fishing. One hooked up. Tons of Brown Rays and bait and chick birds. At night we had a whale and dolphins swim by.

By dawn there were 11 boats fishing. We hooked up at 730 on a spinning rod with Power pro and had a nice fight and landed the fish. 54 inches. Maybe 90-100 lbs. Great Day. No other hookups and buest guess was 5-6 fish for the 11 boats. I think this was the tail end of the run at the claw.

Ended up using 60 gals at 187 miles and had some tasty eating. BFT cooked ahi style (just sear the outside when its real fresh with some seasonings on the outside - cut thin) was just out of this world.

I found it interesting. On the way there, one Captain said they had fish on only butterfly jigs. At the claw, a nice skipper gave us a few squid and said its all squid. We got our fish on a sardine floated way back down low with a long leader (12 ft floro).

Hey we got fish up here now..

Here's a pic of a small boat tuna and an ugly guy...

[Blackfish]

Nice report. I guess tuna moved out of Claw area for now...

[MAKO19]

Kind of tempting to go there but sticking with my game plan for tommorrow and troll as I like the idea of loading up on yellowfins even if they are small with a few slob bluefins mixed right in with the yellowfins and even a few wahoo.

Hey Capt. you planning on heading south or deep?

[Peter]

Hey Capt. when did you get that fish?

[David599]

like I said, its an old report. fished 3 Sep. those fish are long gone.

My buddy caught fish up by us, 42 nm from Manasquan, on Sunday. He had three fish to the boat sunday.

plenty of boats fishing it now... no secret

DavidTanya123@comcast.net

[THE GOOCH]

what size boat is that???????????????????????????

[Great White]

Is that a 14 carolina skiff?

[sharkbait1123]

just wanted to know if "ugly" david survived the attack by the shark over his right shoulder in the distance, maybe he should have had a bigger boat.

nice catch ugly dave.

[Carr Sea]

I was thinking the same thing boat-wise. Seriously.

[David599]

shark? ... no thats a chick bird.

Without going into the debate about small boats, I'll just say we fish this skiff 50-60 times a year and usually fish good weather. We've been caught and its not fun. I especially hate lightning.....

Its a Tolman skiff built from marine plywood, fiberglassed, and set in epoxy. I'm not going to try to tell you how this composite structure compares to those pretty glass boats for strength, but maybe there is a mechanical engineer on here that can.

23'. Its a lightweight monocoque structure boat. Deadrise forward is about 30 degrees, mid hull about 12 degrees, aft 8 degrees. The sides flare out at 22-25 degrees like a dory. While it makes for somewhat leaning outboard attitude while fighting fish, the best thing about it is something called reserve stability (maybe a naval engineer on here can explain that). It drifts in seas better than any boat I've ever been on, from over 100' to teeny tiny. I used to deck out of Brielle and Point and Belmar and have fished since I was about ten. (over thirty years). She drifts fast since its light and in a head sea you have to slow down. The bow is 4 ft high off the water. The boat does not broach at all in following seas due to the broad bow sections. I've seen a 40 footer get tossed sideways coming in Manasquan Inlet with a hard SE swell and wind against a hard outgoing tide. We turned around between swells and did it again. Ours is a fishing boat and so have a big cockpit - 11 feet.
Panga's and Maritime skiffs are IMO the closets type of commercial hull like this - although they are glass and 1/2 again as heavy as wood/glass/epoxy. Wood / glass / epoxy is labor intensive so you wont find them at boat shows normally. Its much easier to get a real high gloss smooth looking rig from a fiberglass mold. You pay for it in weight.

How do you make a boat safe. Build it strong. Build a high splash well and have a big deck (for flotation). Self bailing is best. Build in many compartments under deck so that in the event of a hull breach she will still float well. Self righting would also be great but sadly unless you have a big deep keel your arent going to have a self righting boat unless you have a surfboat special built. This hull is light. Seawater is 64 lbs / ft3. Want to know what makes a safe boat, read Dave Gerr's The Nature of Boats or look at David Pascoes "Why boats sink article". I have zero thru hulls.

Knowledge and ability and driving your boat to match the conditions are paramount. I keep reading these horror posts about guys getting all beat up and breaking parts of their boats coming in from a blown NOAA forecast.... somebody just say "slow down guys". You cant beat physics.... a yard of seawater is 1700-1800 lbs. Think of a good size swell and then think how much weight is in that as your planing boat leaves the water and re-enters it at 30 kts. Your 26' CC Superboat is going to come down hard on that. You can build it very strong. In fiberglass, that means heavier. Weight in planing boats means HP. Lots of it. HP means gas. Gas means $3.50 a gallon and so on.... add the heavy duty truck to pull it with, the dock, etc. We have a light strong seaworthy planing skiff and nothing more... Don't confuse what the 40-50 sportfishers do at their speeds and 25 ton displacement with what displacement boats do.

I am not willing to part with $100K for a twin twin 225 HP Steiger 25 so we built our own boat. She has 1010 hours on the Honda motor running time in seven seasons. A good four stroke is the ticket. WE dont need three of them and we don't need to run at 40 kts. If I built it today I'd go down and see Tom M at South Harbor again in a minute. His guys are great. Usually if it wont start its bad fuel, filters, or an electrical issue such as corrosion on a terminal. I've also had poly rpoe wrapped around the prop. I can and have pull started that Honda.

We have a kicker we put a high thrust prop on. Kickers wont plane planing boats. As kickers, all you get is displacement boat speed (about 1.3 by square root of the waterline - meaning slow on a 25 ft boat - and why ships can go so fast. 25 ft boat - hull speed 6.5 kts, 100 ft party boat - hull speed 13 kts, 400 ft ship - hull speed 26 kts) and you need very little power to get that. You do have issues into the wind so a high thrust motor helps. If you dont want that - you can put a high torque prop on your kicker and it acts much like the Bigfoot motors.

Since I dont want to make this another "how small is too small for X miles offshore" I'll just say we've been lots further off than this... etc.... I'll say that the new guys should have a GPS enabled EPIRB, a raft, and suits you can get cheap. Two radios with one a floating waterproof handheld. Its not much money really. Even inshore guys could benefit from a raft. You arent going to last very long SeaBass fishing 6 miles off the beach in spring, or blackfishing in Dec when the water is 52 if you go in the water. You have a much better chance tuna fishing in 70 some water. It was 74-75 the other day. Really what you want is a boat that wont sink though - as its better to stay with a disabled boat floating then get in a raft. In some ways - you could think of it as a 23' lifeboat....

Tolman Skiffs - they use them in Homer Alaska and they have some severve weather and tides, conditions we dont get. You can google them.

Heres a better pic showing the aft end of the boat. Yeah theres a fish in it.

The first guy isn't me. Hes much uglier. Guess we'll have to go offshore now that that inshore Lobster Claw bite died...

I really like this site and have my Barn stickers on the boat trailer and my truck... Catch em up guys. You guys are the best.

[Hardhead]

Holy shit, is that a 90hp? How long does it take you to go 78nm? Interesting read man, i know i couldn't head of 78 miles with that setup, but to each his own i guess. Good luck out there dude........nice read.

[boatliftman]

nice report, cool boat

[David599]

Its a 90. I know I dont need all that power but its nice to have when you need it.

WOT about 26-28 kts depending on load.

5000 rpms about 23 kts

4500 about 19-20 kts.

We have spots for three more on the next trip. Depart out of St Johns Newfoundland for the 24 hour steam to the Flemish Cap. Its a 350 mile steam to the grounds so recommend you bring something to read enroute. We'll be doing 15 kts to save fuel.

We'll be jigging Cod by day and fishing for Swords by night.

[THE GOOCH]

Thats classic......awesome reply