Had the Tom Tambone charter out today for some tough fishing. Had a very hard time finding bunker the day before so I decided to arm myself with clams and my assortment of trolling gear to see what we could do.
Headed south around the hook to a spot that someone gave me a heads-up about the day before only to find the place totally void....no baitfish and NO Stripers. Called another friend of mine who was at the "Rocks" with an armada of boats trolling all kinds of crap and decided not to get involved with crossing lines and boats for a few stripers and bluefish. Besides, my customer "hates" trolling so it was off to another spot that I thought I could find some good "bait" fishing.
Headed back north around a small fleet of boats anchored and clamming in Raritan Bay and noticed it was a very slow pick at best in that area. What amazed me was the amount of Belmar and Pt Pleasant boats that were there. When I saw that, I knew we were going to have a tough day. Moved around to various spots with the NY Bight area only to come up with bluefish. 40 miles on the boat for some bluefish........oh brother!!!
I'm not going to go ranting and raving so I'll keep it short. Since 2004 the number of legal stripers in the Sandy Hook/Raritan Bay area has diminished, regardless of what you may be hearing or reading on other web sites or other media. Sure you can luck out and bang a bunch of fish in one spot on Tuesday, but chances are returning to the same spot on Thursday or Friday is going to yield totally different results. Back a few years ago, I was banging Bass in the same spot day after day for a solid month. Now it's small pods of migrating fish, sometimes inshore, sometimes offshore in federal waters. Some very seasoned veterans, what I would call "expert" Striper anglers also have admitted to me that the Bass fishing the past few years has been tough for them as well. NO CONSISTENCY!!! Here one day, gone the next. Search, travel, waste time.......waste my customers time. I guess that's why they call it fishing and not catching.
Which brings me to something else. Please be appreciative of your captain and mate. (Thank you Tom for your very kind words on Sunday. Mark and I are very grateful) Whether it's me or another boat you use. To a man, most captains and their mates I've met during my time in this business work VERY, VERY hard trying to make their customers happy. Nobody likes to come back to the dock without fish or even a few fish. Smiling faces is part of our reward for a hard days work. Trust me, you won't become wealthy in this business. We do what we do because we like people, we love the water and we like to fish. It's just that simple.
Tight Lines,