Reel Class Fishing | Point Pleasant Fishing Charters

Point Pleasant Fishing

2012 Season in Review!

I think I picked a pretty decent time to write a "season in review" article for us at Reel Class the day following the blizzard of 2013, which dumped about 15" of snow up here in Bergen County and as much as 3'+ to our north and east. With this nasty winter weather around, it's hard to NOT think about our upcoming season and what we've taken from the season prior.

May and June featured OK livelining for bigger bass, as we had many fish over 30# and a handful of 40#ers topped by a fish of 44# - a lot of our fish this season came snagging and dropping - which was tough but still productive.

Spring and summer seabass fishing was generally good when we did it, and the large number of triggerfish we took was very surprising.

Summer fluke fishing, like spring bass fishing, was GOOD. Partially due to a relaxing of our minimum size, partially due to our fluke stocks being in VERY GOOD SHAPE. We caught fish from the beginning to the end of the season, but didn't have any real monsters. Larry took our season pool with a fish over 7#, and the biggest on the boat was taken by Kenny which was a tad over 8#. Most trips between July 1 - September 1 resulted in limits or near-limits, with very few slow trips in the mix. I sincerely hope we see this again this year with the amount of fish we had, the more "fair" regulations, and the maintenance of a good stock of fluke.

Another pleasant surprise was deep water bottom fishing - ling fishing was excellent basically all year long but we didn't see near the amount of cod that we had in 2011 - we also had some pollock and big seabass in the 180-230' wrecks that we fish.

Once late August rolled around, we did some trips out in the deep targeting bluefish and albies, and crushed them every time - we also picked some mahi around pots on a couple of occasions despite strong offshore currents. September was tough for us, as we had some weather issues, and a couple of maintenance related issues. October, until the end, was very good to us with more good bluefish-albie action as well as some very good porgy-seabass fishing.

We did get 1 bass trip in just before Sandy with our good friend Shelby, and that trip will always be remembered as the trip before everything changed at the shore - we caught our limit of bass up north, and had some bluefish, but we knew what was coming...

Then, Sandy hit. Our ocean was changed, our beaches were changed, our landscape was changed. I had Reel Class hauled out on Sunday October 28th, the day the NE winds started screaming. We made final preparations at the house in Ortley, sandbagged our shed, and hoped for the best - we really had no idea what was to come next. Sandy was a storm that destroyed parts of our shore towns, created damage everywhere, but thankfully we survived, Reel Class survived, and we fared OK in Ortley with minor damage - our neighbors and friends were not so lucky :(

I took a ride to Pt. Pleasant that Thursday with my daughter Lauren, to check on the boat, and to just get a look see. When I got to Clark's all the guys were working, cleaning up water damaage, and Reel Class was perfectly fine - what wasn't fine were boats washed up on docks, across the river on the golf course and on private properties. Boats were on the train bridge, and on broadway itself. Pt. Pleasant beach was buried in sand - houses were flooded and residents were cleaning out destroyed belongings. We couldn't get to Ortley via route 35 or via any artery because the barrier island was closed - the breaches in Mantoloking basically destroyed small parts of Route 35. We wouldn't get to the house until 2 weeks after the storm, finding a huge mess but limited damage.

Reel Class didn't go back in the water until 11/14, and we did 2 more trips - wild weather limited us and poor to non-existent bass fishing basically killed our fall season. We did have 2 bass on our first trip, and a fair catch of tog our second trip, but we called it quits the first week of December.

For those that lost during Sandy - we will rebuild! We will be back around April 1st, and will be ready to get back to "normalcy" for us and for all!

Our 2012 season started early, we were in the water the first week of April and were on the bass as soon as we got out of the inlet on our first trip. Jig fishing at its finest, just like fall fishing, basically where we left them off in the fall of 2011. Every trip in April was limit fishing on jigs, with nice fish in the 12-20# range and very few shorts in our trips. Fishing was ridiculously good to say the least! Why? The WINTER of 2011-2012 was mild, the fish stuck nearby, and we had them when things warmed up. Will the same occur in the spring of 2013? Not sure yet - with a NORMAL winter (that we've had) things might be different in April.

2012 Fluke - Season Recap - A season to remember!

We've had some great fluke seasons in the last 10 or so years in our area. Some summers have been extremely tough (2010 coming to mind immediately!), but a few have really stood out and 2011 and 2012, especially, have stood out in my log book and memory as being outstanding fluke seasons. Being a charter boat, and running on a full-time basis through the summer we can really gauge how the fishing is and have a good benchmark to compare our results to other years' results on a seasonal basis.

For instance, 2007, 2008 and 09 were great fluke seasons for us, but we, for some reason, had bigger fish those years with our biggest yearly fish going 9.5# + This year - our biggest fish on the boat was around 8# and wasn't involved in the seasonal pool - so my point is, when you look at a fluke season, or any season in general as a fisherman, you want to look at 2 pieces of the season, a) the #'s of fish caught, and b) the size of the fish caught. For whatever reason, we couldn't get that doormat this season - but the numbers, the numbers were CRAZY good!

The number of keepers CAN BE attributed to the lowered minimum size limit, but the lowered bag limit also limited the keeping aspect which to an extent, was a good thing as we took home what we had to take home, and ended it there.

I tried counting individual limits, crew limits, and boat limits, but there were too many trips where we had "limits" - it's easier to count the trips where we didn't have limits - and there were only 4 of them, all summer long! This accounts for ~500 keeper fluke for the summer - an all-time best for us. There were stretches where we simply didn't fluke fish, because charters were scheduled to fish middle range waters, for bluefish/albies, mahi, and bottom fish so our numbers are a bit skewed there. However, in 15 FTYP marathon trips, all but just 2 featured terrific fishing with lots of keepers.

We had some great fishing locally, both on our north reef and south reef, so we didn't have the need to run "up north" to the usual haunts between Elberon and Monmouth Beach that often, although we did that a few times with good success also. And for once over the last few years, we had good fluking INTO September (we didn't get in on it, but friends did well!).

If I had to sum up the 2012 fluke season in a few words - it would be that 2012 was a great "meat" year as anglers regularly walked away with huge bags of fillets, but the bigger doormattish sized fluke were absent in our catches. We did have dozens upon dozens of 4-6# fluke as we usually do, but the bigger fish over 8# for us were simply absent. Let's hope that 2013 is similar, or even better - and that the policymakers give us a shot again to catch and keep our fish during a season of reasonable length!!!

...And Congrats to our 2012 seasonal pool winner - Larry "The Flukemaster" Valdez!

2011 Season in Review

It's New Years Eve, its beautiful outside, and we thought we'd take a minute to write a quick article summarizing the 2011 season on Reel Class...

For the season, we ran exactly sixty trips combining charter and open boat trips. This number was down a bit from our usual number of trips due to the WILD weather from late August into late October, and our cutting the season 2 weeks short in November due to the upcoming arrival of Capt Allen's daughter Lauren who was born in December.

Reel Class was moved to her slip at Clark's Landing on April 16th, and our first trip wasn't until Friday 4/22 (Good Friday) where we ran an open boat trip. Our initial plan that day was to target bass on jigs (the day before the fish showed up!) but we were greeted with a hard, dry NNE wind as we broke Manasquan Inlet and steep 4-7' seas. We made a u-turn, went back to Clark's, and decided to give winter flounder fishing a try for a bit until the ocean settled. In the hour or so that we flounder fished, we had a couple shorts, and a few nice keepers for the guys. By 10 that hard NNE settled and we snuck out and headed north looking for bass. Off Long Branch, bass fishing was solid as we had 9-10 keepers on krocodile spoons. Trip #1 was a success, and from there on out we set the standard for an excellent season of fishing.

Late April and early May brought up and down striper fishing on the jigs - we ran to LONG ISLAND twice in search of bass (and finding some) but the spring jig bite wasn't what it was in 2010. What was good during this time span was the COD fishing in our "local" waters. Fishing in depths of 90-120' cod were THICK on some of the wrecks and rockpiles E of our inlet in the 15-25 mile range. We had 2 incredible trips, 1 on Mother's Day and the other a week later (Fred M's charter) where we had excellent days of cod catching - 40+ keepers and lots of throwbacks on fresh clams AND jigs!!! In 2012, we are going to focus on our cod fishery a bit more...