Friday 8/20:  Had a FTYP marathon trip today with NJ Bob, Art B, Cool Hand Al, Tom K, and Jeremiah. Ran up north.Found some real clean water, and the first few drifts were just short seabass. A little move further north got is in on the fish, and we worked this area all day long. We would pick anywhere from 1-3 keepers per drift along with loads of shorts, as well as a few seabass.

We had a lull around mid-day when the NW dropped out and we were just spinning around in circles. Once we got that little wind from the E and SE, we had a couple of good drifts where we picked a few more keepers.

Called it a day at 4 and left them biting. We easily boated over 100 fluke, with 27 nice keepers going in the box. Tom led the way with 5 keepers and the big fish which was just under 6#. We also wound up with 13 nice chunky seabass - biggest one was about 2.5#. All fish were taken on bucktail + teaser combos.

Finally, a good day where we had a box full of fluke!! This was a great crew, and yep, NJ Bob's yearly magic of producing the best day of the fluke season on Reel Class continues - out of 7 seasons he's been on for 5 of the season's best trips!! He's our good luck charm of the fluke season!

Saturday 8/21:  Had Gary Decker charter the boat with his dad, buddies Cap, Tino, James, and Andy. Today also happened to be Gary's birthday!

The plan was to mix it up; try to jig some blues first thing, do some fluking, then switch over to seabass. Upon leaving the inlet we had some birds working on some awesome marks, so we put the jigs in but found no takers whatsoever.

We then fished some snags and hills to the S and E for fluke. We had a very good bite going first thing with loads of shorts, 3-5 on at a time, with some nicer ones mixed in. That bite pretty much dried up though by 1030 AM so we switched over to seabassin'. We made a few drops on some snags and caught loads of shorts, with some nice keepers mixed in as well as a few blackfish, with one of those going in the box @ 15".

We ran all over, and pieced a catch together. We called it a day at 230 with around 20 seabass in the box, a couple of fluke, and a keeper tog. The guys were a blast as usual and we will be seeing them in the fall for a bass trip.

Thursday 8/19:  Had Ray Linfante charter the boat for his yearly fluke/seabass trip. This year we ran a half day trip and Ray had his brother in law Anthony along with pals Mike and Carmine.

We spent the first 2 hours of the day fluke fishing locally on some snags, hills, and rocks and picked away at a load of shorts, along with a few keepers to 23" taken by Anthony. We probably had at least a dozen fish JUST UNDER 18" make it to the boat.

The second and final 2.5 hours were spent seabass fishing on the anchor. We had a lot of current out of the N so we couldn't drift. We wound up making 3 drops and every one of them was LOADED with seabass - we had a ratio of roughly 5:1 throwbacks to keepers though but the guys boated quite a few nice ones at every drop. One drop also had a good amount of tog on it as we pulled an even dozen off - most were right around 14" while only 1 made it to the box that was over 14".

By 1PM the guys had enough and we called it a day. We wound up boating easily over 100 seabass, with 20-25 going in the box (didn't get an exact count) to around 2.5#, 1 keeper tog, and a few nice fluke to 23". A very good, quick half day trip for a great group of guys who are always a blast to fish with!!

Weds 8/18:  Had Brian and Mike aboard today for a mixed bag trip - plan was to start with fluking then hit some snags for seabass/porgies. Got off to a very late start as we didn't break the inlet until after 8, and we had a limited time to fish b/c the boys had to be back to LBI by 5PM.

Ran north at 27kts to get at least give us a fighting chance at getting some fish, and we got up there in about 40 minutes. Had some life on the fluke as soon as we stopped the boat, but they were all short. A few shifts and we got into a couple of keepers, and some nice seabass. We re-drifted this area about a half dozen times, with the last couple of times being nothing but shorts but we did pull a few nice ones out to 4#.

When the S wind started up we went inshore to hit some snags and found some nice seabass, but no scup for us even though we read them well. Lots of bergall life everywhere we went also.

We finished the day by fluking again on a rockpile of long branch, but found no bites as we had completely lost the drift -- headed for home early at 3. We wound up with 6 in the box up to 4#, and had some real quality seabass in the mix as well.

Tough day... Its been an ongoing theme this year but it is what it is - we will keep plugging away!

Monday 8/16:  Weathered out!