Sandy hook Beachfront FLuke Report 7-15-06

[Gr8ful One]

Fished with my brother and my old roomate, Pat, aboard John's "Rod Bender II."

Found adult bunkers just outside the AH public marina, and John netted ~70 in one throw.

Started our fluking by power drifting at the mouth of the Shrewsbury River which yielded a couple of shorts. A move to the knoll for a quick drift produced only a large stargazer for me.

Ran down the beach and found tons of bait schools and fish in 15 - 30 feet of water just about everywhere we looked from the nude beach to the Rocks. Tons of short fluke in/around the bait schools, and we were absolutely bailing them 2-3 at a time. A few bats and birds mixed in, but it was mostly short fluke.

Released at least 80 or more short fluke (only 2 all day that were hooked deep & had to go back with hooks still in them.) Ended with 9 keepers (4 for me, 3 for Pat and 2 for John.) Late in the day, we moved offshore to do some looking around, but came up finding only more shorts and some skates.

At the end of the day, we made a quick stop at the rip to chunk the bunkers to see if we could put Pat on a bass, but the fresh chunks yielded only a single small bluefish.

It was nice day on the water with plenty of action from start to finish; we just couldn't seem to mny fluke that weren't cut from the 14-16.25 inch mold. Light winds from the SW all day and water temps from 64-74 degrees.

- Gr8ful

[Skmag357]

sounds like you did a lot better than most people on the keeper to throwback ratio. Most guys I heard were only coming back with 1 or 2 keepers

[procastinator]

Actually the tally for the day came to 11 fluke somehow? . I must have slipped a few in when you weren't looking. The big fluke from the day before maesured at 27.5 inches........nice chunks of meat came off that baby! I was disappointed at the fishing in the mudhole on Friday, I was looking forward to some ling fillets. The weekend fishing can be summed up as lotsa boats, lotsa fluke, and lotsa empty coolers.

[LamiglasMike]

Fished the Hook today (7-18), with a buddy, on my boat the "Hook & Ladder", only two keepers out of 2 dozen, 3 blue fish and some birds. We fished the Fishermans beach, Rip, nude beach and the channel. The party boats were moving constantly for a bite. Caught 3 Fluke on clams but most were on squid strips and Killies.