Welcome to Summer! It will be official at 10:21pm on Sunday night. School is out and this week is the time many people settle into their summer homes for the season. The heat is here to remind us that it really is Summer. With hot days, there is always a chance that a thunderstorm will blast through. For your safety, keep an eye to the sky and an ear to the radio for advance warning on any dangerous weather.

Blue fishing in Great Bay has been slow, but your best bet to get some action would be by anchoring the boat and chumming with bunker chum. Grassy Channel in the evening, just south of 138 marker buoy, has always been a good location. Fish with slender cut mackerel strips on rigs supported up off of the bottom with plastic floats. Try casting and retrieving your favorite bomber or rebel lures into the chum slick. Chumming and float rigs fished off of Pebble Beach and Graveling Point could prove to be effective in the early morning, before there is too much boat traffic.

Fluke fishing has been really strange this week. Some anglers are limiting out and others are coming home without a fish. It's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. There have been an increased number of throwback size Fluke, too. That helps keeps the action level up. There has been a lot of cold water in the bay from a dominantly westerly wind pattern. Fish shallow water and focus your efforts on the last couple of hours of ebbing tide. The lower tide has more back bay water, ie: water that was in the Mullica River, or water that has drained from the marshlands and all the creeks, which has been warmed by the land mass. This can stir the Fluke to a feed. I had several customers tell me that the Fluke fishing was pretty good on the bottom of the outgoing tide right up until the tide turned and started to come in. A good place to start would be in the stakes between Mystic Island and the Fish Factory in the area between the two orange marker balls.

The best Weakfish fishing has been in the mouth of the Mullica River during the morning hours from 4:30am 'till about 8:00am. A few Weakies are being caught in this area right on through the day, but the action is much slower. Drifting is the best method of covering ground to catch weakfish. A slow drift is recommended. If you are drifting fast, either slow the drift down or if that is not possible, it's time to drop the anchor. Fishing with many different rigs, worms, jigs, shad darts and bucktails has all worked well. A couple of things to be said about the Weakfish in the fish box: First, the regulations are 14 fish per angler at a minimum size of 14 inches. Second, Weakfish are the fastest bay fish to spoil if they are not kept on ice in a cooler. The fish gets very mushy and difficult to clean if it is warm. Also, a properly cooled fish is much better food; mushy Weakfish tend to start to taste like 15 pound bluefish!

Sunday, June 21 is Fathers Day! If there isn't one single thing dad needs, because he has so much stuff in the shed and garage, that it's starting to overflow into the living room, then he is a great candidate for a gift certificate. A Scott's Bait & Tackle gift certificate is great idea, because it can be used as a credit line a little at a time. We just keep a running total on the back, which allows for many little bait purchases or those little extras that he says that he needs more of, rather than having to come in and spend it all at once.