Tips to Successful Fishing....

Striped Bass:
The Striped Bass regulations are 2 fish @ 28" or greater. Based upon my yearly log books, 2008 promises to be another good year for Stripers at Sandy Hook. We usually start out clamming for spring Stripers and then as soon as the bunker arrive, we will switch over to chunking. Sometimes we troll Stretch 25's on braided line throughout the bay which can be productive too. Last spring, trolling the 25's was very productive along the Reach. Chunking bunker is a great way to catch Stripers and everyone gets to participate. In the fall, we fish for Stripers using eels as bait while drifting area such as the "Rip" at the tip of Sandy Hook, Sandy Hook Channel and other "striper hangouts" stored on my GPS..

Tips:
1- To catch the really big Stripers, our bait of choice are "bunker heads", using the remainder of the fish for chunking. Disgard the tails!

2-To catch "fresh" bunker, our most effective way is to throw a cast net. Our 10' Calusa net sinks really fast in waters up to 20 feet. One good cast and you have enough bunker for a full days trip and more. We will also throw a weighted treble hook and "snag" cast bunker too.

3- "Clamming" is also another very successful way to catch Stripers. A bushel bag of "sea clams" is usually enough for a 4 man trip for a couple of hours. Anchor up around clam beds or wherever you "mark" fish and chum using cracked clams as bait. Put 4 - 5 clams in a bucket and break them up with a hard object (baseball bat) and then add some sea water to make a soupy mixture. Then disperse this mixture in the water around the boat....
works great.
Shuck another clam for your hook making sure you impale the clam on the hook securely through the tongue of the clam. We make it a habit of using 36" long leaders with a fishfinder rig and cast the clam bait away from the stern of the boat and fish our reels in "free spool" until pickup. DON"T set the hook in the normal way with circle hooks, just lock the reel. We use 6/0-9/0 Gama circle hooks exclusively......more hookups, and less waisted fish.

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Fluke:
The 2008 Fluke season is open from May 24 thru September 7. 2007 was a very good fluking season aboard "Reel Fun". Due to the increase in size regulations for 2008, we will, once again, be fishing deeper water (channels), using larger baits (big bait.....big fish) targeting "Doormat" size Fluke. Even though the Fluke reg's for 2007 was 17.5" and everyone was worried about meeting the minimum size, the anglers aboard Reel Fun had very little trouble finding good numbers of keeper fish to satisfy everyone. It was just a matter of knowing where to fish for the bigger fish.........DEEP WATERS!!. Deep water and around structure usually insured beautiful 3,4 & 5 lb fish constantly throughout most of our trips.
Places to fish for 2008: Sandy Hook Channel, Ambrose Channel, Sandy Hook Reef for starters.

Tips:
1- We drift for Fluke to keep the baits moving. My choice of baits are squid strips and spearing combo, strips of bunker, strips of sea robbin and strips of bluefish. Targeting larger Fluke, I will use large strips or even whole small squid as bait in deep channel areas such as Sandy Hook and Ambrose channel.

2- Bucktail jigs with squid strips can be deadly too, rigged along with a Clouser or Deceiver teaser on the same line.

3- A "killer" bucktail last year was the 1oz - 4 oz Spro in Glo finish fished with a strip.........absolutely deadly!!!

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Weakfish (Sea Trout):
The weakfish run for 2007 was in a word..........disappointing. A few days here, a few days there, moving here, moving there. No consistency. Verrazano Bridge one day, back around Princes the other. Well, let's hope that 2008 brings a better yield of Weakfish and they stay put for a few weeks.

Tip: We drift for Weakfish using sandworms and peanut bunker as bait. This is a great light tackle way to fish for these really beautiful fish. With Weakfish, don't set the hook hard, as you will rip the hook and its mouth right off the fish. You can also use soft plastic baits in "pink" that can be tossed at them and retrieved slowly on light sticks and small spinner reels which we use for this kind of fishing. We use 7' St. Croix Tidemaster's matched along with Penn 4500 spinning reels.

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Tight Lines.....Capt. John