The Scotts Bait and Tackle Weekly Bulletin

The Scott's Bait & Tackle Weekly Bulletin

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Scott's Bait & Tackle Weekly Bulletin for Thursday, July 30, 1998

This week wasn't a whole lot different than last week as far as the weather and the fishing goes. Even the green flies weren't biting that much. Anglers continue to fish hard. They did find plenty of Weakfish in Great Bay and the occasional Fluke both in the Great Bay and in the Atlantic Ocean.

Fluke fishing in the bay seemed to be in several different areas. The mouth of the Mullica River, drifting from the shallow water near Oyster Bed Point back up into the river produced a few Fluke with a large ratio of throwback sized fish. Drifting through the clam stakes on the Mystic Island side of the Fish Factory proved to be as good as or better then the Mullica River area. Floating bucktails/floating round ball jigs or shad darts supported off the bottom with large plastic floats were the trick to adding a few extra fish into the fish box from this shallow clam stake area. It is still necessary to bait these jigs with long slender pieces of squid and a minnow. Shedder oil scent will help make a Fluke strike a strip of squid. Try some of the squid soaked in the shedder oil and some without and prove to yourself that the shedder oil really works. The last area that

there were several dependable Fluke reports was from the Little Egg Inlet area, specifically along the 'F' and 'G' bouy cans. Top and Bottom rigs work well in the deeper water conditions. Throw all those shad darts in the tackle box, because they just can't reach the bottom in the deeper, faster moving inlet water. Sucessful use of a top and bottom rig usually requires a 5 ounce sinker or even heavier. The trick to the rig is to make sure the rig is fished as vertically as possible so that there is a high hook off the bottom. If you let too much line out and fish the rig horizontally, the rig becomes a duel bottom rig and is not serving the purpose it was designed to do. Try dropping an 8 ounce sinker on one of your top & bottom rigs supported by one of your heavier boat poles. I think you will be pleasantly surprised to find that this setup with the heavier weight will out produce other fishing rods fished differently. Remember, let just enough line out so

that the sinker barely reaches the bottom. Moving out on the Atlantic Ocean, earlier in the week, a few anglers found a decent catch of Fluke on the Little Egg Reef Site. Each drift earned them a single 2 pound Fluke. But, after a few hours fishing, that did add up to a pretty decent catch. Today, Thursday, one angler weighed in three 2 1/2 pound Fluke that he caught in front of the White water tower on the Southern end of Long Beach Island. He concentrated his fishing efforts in aproximately 20 feet of water.

There seems to be a ton of Weakfish around. Surely, most of these fish are caught before 7:00 in the morning. Otherwise, it seems that they feed at slack high tide for about an hour or so of the outgoing tide. Best fishing areas are Marshelder Channel in Tuckerton Bay and the mouth of the Mullica River in Great Bay. Other areas are producing also, so if you have a favorite location for Weakfish, be sure to give it a try. Look for boats that have anglers standing up, these folks are usually catching fish. Quietly observe their drift pattern and imitate it without driving the boat through the drift area and be sure to idle the vessel as to not spook the Weakfish. Baits are several. Shedder crabs are still the best bet. Some anglers are having just as good of luck of catching Weakfish on regular Blue Claw crab chunks soaked in artificial shedder crab oil. If you choose to fish with regular crab, be sure to save the backs of the crabs for proof to the law enforcement folks that you are cutting up legal size Blue Claw Crabs.

Some anglers are using Bloodworms and Sandworms and are actually finding out that they can catch fish just as well with these alternative baits as they can with the shedder crab bait.

Kingfish, porgies, blowfish: Not much happening up this way. We did have a report that there was some good kingfish (and some nice sized blues) activity down in the Cape May area along the jettys. One in particular produced very well: there being a deeper cut along the edge of the jetty from beach rebuilding/storm erosion. Might be just a week or
so before they show up here, hopefully.

Our daughter made an attempt at snapper-blue fishing Tuesday evening in the back lagoon at the house. It was low tide and windy, so I didn't expect much. Most of the spearing-baited casts, that received any hits at all, yielded crabs when the line was reeled in. Beth was very happy with the single fish that she caught: a 7" Oystercracker. A higher evening tide and calmer winds are better. Next week we will aim for that, and use live minnows instead of frozen spearing, since that should appeal more to the young bluefish.

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