The theme this week for the boats of the Beach Haven Charter Fishing Association is variety. The captains are scoring and getting excited about the fishing in the bay, in the ocean not too far from the inlet, and offshore.
Captain Fran Verdi on the "Francesca Marie" made his first offshore trip of the year Sunday to the Wilmington Canyon. He arrived at 5am and had lines in the water 15 minutes later. He worked the East wall, the Tip, and the West Wall for about 4 hours with not even a touch. He made the decision to troll north looking in the flats and had the first bite of the day which turned into a nice 30-pound yellowfin tuna. He then trolled the 40 and 50 line where he found one more tuna in the 30-pound class. They then headed in and ended the day with a 40-pounder.
Another day Captain Fran fished wrecks in 80-feet of water and had steady action on black sea bass, blackfish, and ling. He moved to a wreck in 65-feet of water but most of the fish were out of season blackfish and short sea bass. He returned to deeper water and better action. The "Francesca Marie" ended the day with 22 sea bass and 4 big ling in the cooler. He estimates they threw back another 40 sea bass and all of the blackfish.
Captain George Finck had a crew out on the "Sparetime" fishing the reef. They had good action but all were shorts. He moved into the bay where they had a nice catch of bluefish. The next day he had the Rotelle family out to the reef with great weather and good action on fluke and sea bass. The boys were out fished by the female anglers, and the family went home with dinner.
Meanwhile, Captain Gary Dugan of Irish Jig Sportfishing reports fishing in the waters of Great Bay with loads of action on the fluke along with some very nice fish ending up in the box.
Additional information on the captains and boats of the Beach Haven Charter Fishing Association can be found at www.bhcfa.net