Sunday 5/16:  Had a 2 man charter of Brian and Billy aboard this morning with Kenny and I. Got some intel late yesterday by several people that it went off Saturday evening to our south, so we broke the inlet just after 6 and headed south.

Originally our intent was to get some bunker and fish them in and around the pods, but as we were making our way south we ran into a big patch of birds working 50-60' depths. Once I slowed the boat down, the screen lit up like a christmas tree with boomerangs and we got the jigging rods out immediately and started working the marks.

As soon as the jigs got in the water, it was GAME ON with BIG FISH slamming the 47's, 7 oz krocs, and 5" storm shads. The first fish in the boat was a 37# pig taken by Brian on a 7 oz kroc, and Billy and Kenny both followed with fish right around 30#. We had 3 real good shots of them, mostly on readings, where we had 2-3 on at a time.

With that said, that jig bite was short lived and was pretty much over and spread out by 8AM, but we kept looking around and picking one or two here and there. So By 9, we had had enough, so we got the trolling sticks out, and put the stretches back in the water and had 4 knockdowns in the first 10 minutes, boating a few more nice ones to 30#. But that, like the jig bite, quickly died as the tide slacked.

We kept looking around the rest of the day, Billy got one suicidal fish on a kroc around mid-day, and we found a couple of patches of 5# bluefish working on rainfish before we called it quits at around 2:30PM.

We wound up boating ~20 bass (maybe a couple more than that) to 37# --only keeping 5 for the table. Most fish were in the 18-30# range, with a few going between 30-37#. We also boated about a half dozen bluefish.

By no means was this a monumental day, but the bite early in the morning was VERY GOOD and we made the most of that hot early bite. Hats off to Brian for besting his previous personal record (set YESTERDAY) of 35# with that beautiful 37# fish which was released unharmed. Great day with a couple of regulars who know how to make Gomez laugh a lot!!Thanks again guys!

Saturday 5/15:  Had the Bob Schlink charter aboard. Had hopes of livelining and/or jigging some fish up north. Got a late start but found some bunker just N of Shark River; they weren't concentrated enough to throw the net at that point nor could we get the snags into any so we went into troll mode after a futile attempt at jigging over some marks off Long Branch.

We put the sticks out around 9 am and head a steady pick of bass and bluefish the rest of the day trolling between Long Branch and Monmouth Beach. Bomber and Mann's stretch plugs as well as white shad rigs did the trick.

By day's end we boated 7 bass to 25# (biggest taken by Jim), and about a dozen bluefish to 10#. The crew had a great time, even though we certainly didn't have our best day catching!