The Double Down II went out early today on an open boat charter. Today the guys wanted bluefish and fluke, in that order.
We dropped our hook by 6:45AM and started chumming heavy to bring in our yellow eyed demons. By 7AM the first blue was boated, and the guys were looking forward to bluefish all around... however, next fish in was a dirty dog, and after that a bigger one and after that... you get the picture.
After a while of dogfishing we upped anchor and shifted towards Old Orchard to try again. Unfortunately it seems that the blues are running around the bay and are scarce while the Raritan Bay dogfish were quite plentiful. After catching a few more blues and playing check-and-release with the dogfish, we switched over to fluke fishing.
The fluke were around in reasonably good quantities and seemed to prefer bait to gulp. Squad and killies did the trick, and soon shorts with a couple of 19-inchers where netted.
All in all it was a good day with blues and fluke in the box. Another successful open boat fishing trip. We'll be going open boat on Thursdays and Fridays until the end of the season! Call for the few remaining spots for this coming Thursday (July 29th). We're going for jumbo fluke!