Kayak trips and fishing reports 2011

[DarkSkies]

8-22 quick trip

Took a quick trip of only 6 1/2 hours last night.

Total 3 medium bluefish.
5 legal porgies to 13"


full report in the LI Nomad thread.

[DarkSkies]

Fished the RB Fri morning, last 2 hours of flood, first 2 of ebb.

Perfect conditions, water was like a lake.

2 short bass, 3 blues.
Bass on T&W.
Blues trolling small diving swimmer.

I know the area I was fishing, so I was confident I would catch a fish or 2.
The most disturbing thing to me was all the shoreline I trolled that was "dead water", with only small pockets of bait and snappers here and there.

Previously productive areas of structure were a vast wasteland of warm water and an all-encompassing algae bloom.

No action in shore area except for small hits on the T&W, nothing on different swimmers.

All the fish I got were concentrated in one area of structure, minimum of 15-20' of water. They were only there for the top of the tide. By 7:30am the action was completely done.

Pedalled back through green scum algae. It was prevalent through at least the top foot of the water column.

I felt like I was fishing in a toilet.





The waters of LI Sound have really spoiled me.
Also, I knew weakfish, kingfish, bass and other creatures were packed into JBay, and was wistfully looking over there across as I dealt with the scum-saturated water where I was.

(the bite in Jbay did slow down that day, but lucky Eli, the human fishfinder, fishing a live eel in deep water, hooked into a 6' dusky shark he fought for a 1/2 hour. Fantastic fight, bro, wish I was there with you guys.


Calm pre-dawn launch




The water was so calm you could see the mirror reflection of the T&W in the water.




Sunrise on the water





Bass aggressive on the Finchaser T&W. The bass action only lasted for 15 minutes.






This was the scum that was in the water along the shoreline. Hopefully the storms will break up some of this organic growth. It's nasty.

[porgy75]

That algae and weeds pic was gross dark, how long do you think it will take the bay to get back to normal? How could the baifish thrive in that?

[DarkSkies]

Porgy, sorry I didn't answer your question sooner.
In the time that has passed, the bay got back to normal, some bigger fish came in, got caught for a week or so.

The mullet emptied out with the last storm and these moon tides. There are some left, but many bay spots are dead water at this time, still tinged with brown and possibly some sewage runoff. Not a great early fall for the Raritan Bay, considering the JBay action was consistent and pretty reliable with bass, bluefish, kingfish, weakfish, big porgies and some other fish, until recently with this SE low pressure system.

Your best bet is the ocean, inlets, or rivers now, the key factor being large schools of bait.


*****
Kayak report Thu - fished a back bay area this morning where some mullet had been gathering. At the time they were most active I couldn't get out there. By the time I did, the action disappeared. I tried to make it happen by trolling rubber and medium diving swimmers. Nothing.

Finally in desperation I went with the old reliable, T&W. I hadn't intended on using it and didn't have any sandworms, so I didn't have the highest confidence. Went with gulp bloodworms, which should have pulled at least a few small bass. The only action I managed was from tiny bluefish, too small to even hook themselves on the circle hook. Fished into the heavy rains and called it a day when it was obvious it was a losing battle.

Can't wait to get some work finished in NJ and get back to fishing the Sound. Fishing today made me realize how some yakkers in the sound take their action for granted. That place is a virtual fishbowl of activity, while many NJ areas are hit and miss. Hey, that's fishin.

[bababooey]

I don't want to hear about some snapper reports. Gio out and catch some big ones, and then let's hear about it. As you said the clock is ticking.

[cowherder]

Give the guy a break bababooey. I don't recall seeing any posts from you lately, are you fishing from your living room? I will be out tonight and hopefully have some bass to report.

[DarkSkies]

Danny was out yesterday and got into fish about 1 mile from shore. The 2 of them did exceptionally well, congrats Dan!
Posted with his permission...

Some yakkers in OC did well yesterday also, again, out of reach of surfcasters...





***************
A December to remember !!!
Everytime I think it's close to over....it's another great day!

Fishin Ish and I launched at first light this morning with a surf that was "OK" every 8-10 seconds or so, and at times was big enough to make for major crash. We both made it out and back OK, but timing was everything.

We headed straight for the green can but never made it. There was just a crazy amount of birds and fishing crashing all over the place. The north-west wind was about 10-20 with white caps and a nasty chop and a light rain....perfect striper weather. Further out the bird life was even more intense, but with the wind, we never made it out that far and we had all the fish that we could handle within a mile or so from the beach.

We easily had about 50-60 fish between us and with both of us having to get back for work, we landed at about 11 AM with still acres and acres of birds around.

I had a great day jigging and had one stretch of about 15 fish in 20 drops. We didn't get anything over 32", but we had at least 15 keepers between us and most of the fish were just at or near 28".

Another great day of December bassin!!!



Here are the keepers from the both of us for the morning.



Here is a short video of a short fish that I jigged.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVdfm...ature=youtu.be




Danny V

[dogfish]

Nice bassing for December, lads. I saw my last fall fish about 2 months ago. Jealous as can be, way to go.

[hookset]

Wow that looks like some intense fishing, way to get on em!

[7deadlyplugs]

Fantastico! Thanks for sharing.

[vpass]

That's awsome Danny.That has to be a hoot

[stormchaser]

Great stuff guys! Way to go.