Father’s Day weekend fishing trip in New Jersey

My son Roger invited me and my wife Barbara up to his home in New Jersey for Father’s Day weekend. They live in Freehold Township, which is about a three-hour drive on a normal day, but on a Friday afternoon with one lane closed on the Delaware Memorial Bridge, it took us the better part of four hours to make the trip.

As my Father’s Day present, Roger had arranged for us to use his friend Gene’s boat and fish the Manasquan River. Roger had great luck there fishing from his kayak, and catching stripers and bluefish at night around the pilings of the railroad and Route 35 bridges.

In order for us to fish the outgoing current, we arose at 3 a.m and drove straight to the dock in Brielle, where Gene had his Carolina Skiff moored. This model of Carolina Skiff has a vee bottom and center console, making it a perfect boat for fishing the river and inshore ocean when the weather permits. The weather did not permit Saturday morning, with south winds of 15 to 20 knots and seas of four to five feet. We stayed in the river.

Roger started the day with a popper that he said had worked for him in the past. I used a white bucktail with a white twister tail that had worked on stripers at Indian River Inlet. Neither worked Saturday morning. We ran from the two bridges up to Treasure Island to the Dog Beach and everywhere in between. Nothing. No sign of life. No birds, no fish breaking and no fish on the SONAR.

Once the sun came up, we switched to fluke gear. That’s what they call a summer flounder in New Jersey. I went with my favorite bright-green bucktail by Jim with a green crawfish by Gulp!

Roger tied on a rig he made. It has a bucktail on the bottom with a teaser about 12 inches above. The teaser is a green Gulp! swimming mullet and the bucktail carries the same Gulp! model.

Flounder fishing was almost as productive as our effort to catch stripers and bluefish. Roger did manage to pull in one short. I cleaned out a great deal of the seaweed in the Manasquan River. Finally, the seaweed got so bad and the Old Man got so sleepy that we headed back to the dock.

As some of you may know, Roger had a 100-ton master’s license and ran head boats in Virginia Beach. He needed every bit of his boat-handling skill to get Gene’s boat into its slip. The slip was the very last one down a long dock where the current ran hard against the direction you wanted to go. Roger put that boat with the bow into the current with just enough power to keep it heading in the right direction until we were at the slip and then he gave it a bit more for a perfect docking.

Once we got the boat unloaded, I saw Roger bait a non-offset circle hook with a bit of tuna belly and drop it in the water by the fish-cleaning station. He did this several times until he finally had a fish pick it up. At that point, he handed me the rod and when the line came tight, I cranked in the decent-sized striper.  Roger took my photo and I quickly released the dock fish.

Happy Father’s Day!

Fishing report

Summer fishing is beginning to make itself felt in area waters. The first Spanish mackerel have been caught at Fenwick Shoals on trolled Clark or Drone spoons. I use 0 size Drones on 30 feet of 15-pound Hi Seas mono leader behind a one- to three-ounce trolling or torpedo sinker or a #1 Drone planer. If there are any bluefish in the area, you will pick them up as well.

Black sea bass are still available at the inshore reef sites, but keepers are becoming more difficult to find. Summer flounder are there as well as at the Old Grounds and around the rough bottom at B buoy. Squid, minnows and Gulp! will work on the flounder, while clams, squid and jigs account for most of the sea bass.

I wish I had better news for us surf fishermen, but things are still slow. A few kings here and there along with small trout, croaker and spot. Bloodworms and Fish Bites are the top baits.

Delaware Bay reef sites have spot, croaker, trout and flounder. So far, these fish are on the small side. Squid, bloodworms and live minnows plus Gulp! and Fish Bites have done the job here. The same fish are available from the fishing pier at Cape Henlopen State Park.