Saturday 5/22:  Had the Pete Schussler charter aboard from PA. The guys had to drive 2 hrs. + to get to Point Pleasant so we got off to a bit of a late start pulling out of Clark's at 7. Before today, none of them had ever livelined or caught a bass over 20#. That was going to change in a hurry :)

Got bait real quick right outside, then went off into the deep to find some fish. Found a little life off Sea Girt where we had a couple of run-offs, but that was it. We also found a little life about an hour later off Spring Lake, with a couple more swings and misses. I then got a couple of calls from guys to our north who were into a bit of a bite up the beach. We were on the low side with livies so Capt Alan brought us about 20 fresh ones and we headed north (thanks again man!)

We finally got into some fish up in the Bradley - Allenhurst stretch right in the pods, and we finally started getting some meat in the box. At this point it was already noon time.

We followed this pod which was LOADED with bass all the way up to almost Long Branch. Every drift, we'd have several runoffs with plenty of fish making it to the boat - the bite was VERY GOOD and at times it was stupid fishing. But, with all the boat traffic the bunker kept coming up and down so the fish were at times tough to catch. Even with all the boats, MOST guys were respectful and used as much caution and ettiquette as possible!! With all that said, we actually had some awesome surface strikes with big bass coming up and slamming the bunker right on top!

At one point I was snagging bunker and got drilled by a fish on the retrieve. None of the guys wanted the fish so I brought her to the boat, she was 45"/36#.

We left them biting at 245 - the action was still real good... The guys kept their 10, most fish were in the 20-30# range, with a couple over 30# topped the one 36#. Another EXCELLENT day this spring - these guys were a trip and kept Kenny and I laughing all day long!

Sunday 5/23:  Had Bob T charter the boat for a seabass and bass trip.. Our plan was to start out bass fishing, then switch over to seabassin' a bit later.

We broke the inlet just before 6 and found the bunker spread out and deep; real hard time even snagging them - we had no chance with the net. We were still able to secure about 20 baits after about 40 minutes of really working at it to get them, so we went off into the deeper water and started looking. Found some great marks, here and there, but we could only manage one solid runoff.

After sticking with this until around 9:30, we decided it was time to switch over to bottom fishing so we picked up and headed south of the inlet to fish some snags in 60-75' of water. We were on the anchor all day as there was no chance for us to drift in the 3-5' seas, the E breeze, and a hard tide kinda butting up aside the wind.

Nevertheless, we bounced around, making around 6 drops. First couple were very slow, just a few shorts and keepers, but a third drop further to the south in 65' yielded a good pick of keeper and short seabass, a nice 22" cod taken by Mike, and a few would be keeper blackfish that had to go back.

We kept bouncing around from piece to piece, and put a nice catch together. Lots of real nice 2-3# seabass in the mix along with the shorts, no dogfish, and just lots of life in general! We also read a lot of sandeels right on the bottom -- I tried diamond jigging for the seabass but couldn't even get a sniff...

We wound up boxing around 50 seabass, 2 nice ling, and the one 22" codfish. Again we also had a few tog, and there was lots of bergall life on every drop. Real good day with a great crew who stuck it out all day long despite the sloppy conditions!! Also, a big thanks to Socks and Andy for filling out the trip for Bob!!