"Are there any blues around here?" by Alexi

 "Plugs are American in origin and Americans enjoy fishing with them.  When a bluefish explodes under a surface popper, the reason is clear to see.  Even though I have had this happen to me countless times, I am still inclined to put tooth marks on my heart when the attack comes."  

from a book titled "Bluefishing", Henry Lyman

©1987 published by Lyons & Burford.

   (And now just a few words from myself, otherwise I'd like to let the photos do their job for this post.)

  We started fishing at first light.  I had spent the night out there and Steve met me in the pre-dawn hours.  All of the bass were schoolies and I keyed into them in a couple of spots.  The blues, however, were gators.  I had confidence in my all white smack-it jr. popper mostly because, after a morning of slow fishing, I had talked to land based caster who had just landed ten or so blues.  So I passed him slowly, switched to my popper, and started casting around the grass flats with my lightest-up;  Stradic 2500, 15lb braid, 20lb leader, on a Cabelas salt striker light rod.  I like this set-up a-lot for the bay and haven't used it much this year.  It's almost like a fly rod, if I want to get a small offering out there I can.  

The reason I fish

large piranha

     We moved off of the flats out onto Seal Island which borders OCC.  Unfortunately,  it looks like Seal Island is shrinking.  The Sedges are ever changing, shifting, and mostly the fish back there move around, but consistently we've pulled out some big blues on bucktails from this spot.  Once Steve keyed in on his retrieve and cast he was pretty much on fire.

Blue on a Bucktail from Seal Island 

too big for the bag/smoker 

What has been a SLOWWW spring is now starting to shape-up.  This is Steve's biggest bluefish ever.   Could this become the personal best record breaking Spring we've been hoping for?  

Week of May 4th "The Spring that wasn't" by Alexi

   Getting skunked at the Sedges in May???? Unheard of! (but it's fishing)
   
     Lets go back a few days.  Steve had to get a new Humminbird transducer from Chris at the kayak fishing store. He left early in the day.  I had some things to do so I left a few hours later.  The opportunity wedged in between weather and work was for Wednesday May 7th.   I was super-on-the-fence about where to fish.  I had the day off but was very uncertain about  Nummy.  I wanted to go to the Sedges at IBSP.   After a whole lot of back and forth in my head (and out loud ranting) I decided to join Steve at Nummy.  In my head I was debating the chances of catching keeper bass (IBSP) vs. schoolie bass (Nummy), and as I have been hearing reports of some keepers in the surf at IBSP I thought MAYBE they would be in Oyster Creek Channel. BUT.... I still went to Nummy.

    I could see Perchman (Steve) from the bridge going into N. Wildwood.  He paddled back to the launch to meet up and we proceeded to the spaghetti. Once there we had about three hours of consistent action on Tube-n worm and some hits on eels.   the fish ranged in size from 20 to 28".

     Suffice it to say I was not disappointed in my decision to go to Nummy.  But still the thought of larger bass at IBSP haunted me, and so Steve picked up more Eels on his way home with a plan for fishing all night on Saturday may 10th.

     And so it happened this way; we executed the plan perfectly!  We got skunked at the sedges.  We drifted Eels up and down and up again at Snake Ditch and spent a total of at least three hours in Oyster Creek Channel with eels.  The only action, was a gator blue at sunrise who had committed to my eel, but wasn't hooked.  And so I fought it to my boat, then it swam away.
 
     We are now faced with a dilemma of a very serious magnitude: do we spend three days we have off this week set aside to fish at Barnegat, or do we, instead, change our plans and go to North Wildwood?

 Stay tuned to find out what happens next...