Scott'sBait & Tackle
   Weekly Bulletin for
Thursday, August 5, 1999

Over the past few days, some anglers have asked the whereabouts of the bluefish. During the hottest summer months, the bluefish migrate north, as far as Maine. This is good news, because it lets other species of fish like kingfish and croakers move into areas that the bluefish would normally occupy. On many occasions, bluefish will be caught 30+ miles offshore by anglers chunking butterfish for catching tuna. The Barnegat Light head boats lure the Bluefish into an area like the Barnegat Ridges with a lot of chum. This additional bait in the water will aid in keeping bluefish around. Flocks of birds can locate schools of one pound bluefish working the sand bars in and around the Inlets in August. Follow those birds! These are the tastiest of all bluefish, so they are worth catching and a lot of fun on light spinning tackle. Throw small metal lures or sacrifice a color of plastic worm you never use on an old rusty bucktail and cast and jig vigorously under working sea gulls. Most of the small bluefish action occurs at the break of dawn and only lasts a few hours at most.

Weakfish are plentiful in the Great Bay. The trick is to be where they are when they turn on the feed. High outgoing tide has been the most productive fishing time as well as at daybreak. Anglers have reported weakfish caught in every area of the Great Bay that you would expect weakfish to be: the mouth of the Mullica River, the West bank of Great Bay in front of Oyster Creek, Motts Creek and Landing Creek, Little Sheepshead Creek by boat and off of the 5th Bridge after dark, as well as the Marshelder Channel and Black Point headed back up into Atlantic City (gotta fish the bank tight here as well as the holes). Shedders are the best bait if you can get them, with Bloodworms doing a fine job when the crabs are unavailable, on small hook bait rigs or a shad dart. Try drifting the area between Oyster Creek and Landing Creek with a shad dart baited with bloodworms supported a little off the bottom by a large plastic float.

Fluke....I don't really know what to tell you about fluke this week. It's pretty much a redundant story. The inland waterway from 131 to 134 is still providing the best catching activity with a very high ratio of throwback to keeper fluke. Ocean fishing is shifting around while the magic depth to be in is still 60 feet of water. Quite a few anglers had the best success on the lumps off of Brigantine. If you pull out a chart, you can see quite a few variances in the bottom. These lumps and holes are where you should concentrate your fishing efforts. Repetitive short drifting of the same small area where you caught fish, will undoubtedly put the most fish in the box. Make sure you save that loran or GPS number for future reference. It really doesn't mean too much until you accumulate a few hot spots in the same area. There is a real sense of satisfaction when you can bounce around a few numbers in your log, then land on one and actually start bailing fish.

It's August, which means it's time to chum for kingfish, blowfish, sea bass and porgies in the Great Bay. There are several areas to focus your chumming efforts. The North West side of the Fish Factory in the channel marked by the pink balls, in a hole out near the 134 marker buoy or in the stakes in front of Graveling Point. Anglers reported some kingfish and porgies this week, but no one mentioned a blowfish or a keeper size sea bass. Bay chumming can provide the best fishing activity when you need to produce fish for impatient kids, and come to think of it, adults too. These smaller fish are the sweetest eating fish weather you fillet them and fry them or do the cleaning method of taking off the heads-tails-guts-scales and bake them. Break out the chum pot, clam chum, some squid or clam bait and go have a good time fishing.