5/26 Jersey Trip

Memorial Day Weekend. The start of busy season. I've been pretty busy myself in the past couple weeks as I have been looking into buying a boat. I quietly drove down to NJ a couple weeks ago to look at a boat, one that I felt might be the one. Turns out, the boat was in great shape, and I agreed to buy it. So this weekend I planned to go pick it up.

There was a pretty serious Black Drum Bite happening on the beaches of Atlantic and Ocean counties for a day or 2 leading up to this trip, and I had to give it a shot, so I drove down on May 23 with sandspikes and chunk rods ready to go. I hit the beaches for the afternoon and once again I was a day late and a dollar short, and the Black Drum were long gone. I knew there was a good chance this would happen, and I planned to fall back on Striper Fishing the night in attempt to salvage the trip. By 730pm I knew I wasn't catching any drum, I had landed a handful of dogs and skates and the trashfish action was only picking up steam as the sun got lower. The bugs also were picking up steam.

Took a ride to a favorite inlet to give the Bass a shot. I jigged and plugged an inlet jetty and while it started off slow, by nights end I had gotten my fill with Stripers mostly in the 30"-38" class. Best bite was late in the outgoing tide, and for a couple hours around 1-3am I was getting bit just about every cast. My biggest fish went about 43" and hit a 6" Elias Shad on a 1.5oz jighead. Most fish I caught were on that same jig. Typically I like darker colors at night, and while the first fish of the night hit a blurple megashad, I started doing much better on lighter colors, and after switching to lighter colors I started to get a lot more action. Also had plenty of bites on a Northbar Bottle Darter for a period of time once my Soft Plastic stash started to get low. All said and done I caught 20+ bass with 2 in the low 40" class, missing/losing plenty more. Expectations were far exceeded, I was just hoping to catch a couple decent fish and I would have been happy. NJ has exceptional fishing opportunities, if you can be at the right place at the right time. No doubt plenty of anglers are finding great Striper fishing who are out there putting in the effort.

From there I drove to Delaware where I hung out with my parents for a day, before driving back to Brigantine and picking up my new to me Boat and trailering it back to RI. I will be busy getting this boat in order for awhile now and don't think Ill be doing a ton of fishing, but soon I will be offering guided trips with the boat.