Scott'sBait & Tackle
   Weekly Bulletin for
Thursday, August 10, 1999

Fluke fishing in the bays is getting tougher. It might be that there are less fluke in the bays due to the seasonal migration out on the ocean. It is a little early for that, but it continues to be a strange fishing year, so anything is possible. Anglers continue to catch fluke, but they are working harder at it. By that, I mean they are running multiple short drifts in areas where they picked up decent fluke. Short drifting is a lot more work then setting up a one mile drift through the inland waterway. We’ve had anglers ask whether one tide is better to fish than another. As far as I have been able to tell, there usually isn’t, but when a faster moving current is involved, like drifting near Tuckers Island or out in front of the Coast Guard Station, then the last of the slower moving incoming tide has been best. The area that still has the best ratio of keeper fluke to short fluke is the inland waterway running parallel to the South end of Long Beach Island. Drifting from 108 marker down to 120 marker has put some fluke in the box, but don’t go out expecting limit catches. Remember to drift the shallow water to deep water drop-offs and work’em over and over again. The tackle varied this week. Plenty of anglers are still using the spin & glow rigs and others are using top & bottom rigs. A few have switched over to bucktails and shad darts when fishing the shallow water. Minnows, squid and spearing are still the bait choices; nothing new and fancy on the bait scene this week.

Fluke fishing on the ocean is the same old story. Every once in awhile we have an angler bring in a limit catch or just about limit catch of 2 to 6 pound flatties. Some very impressive coolers full of fluke have passed through the store. The “where” continues to be 45 to 62 feet of water, three to six miles off of the beach. Top and bottom rigs are the ticket, baited with the standard squid and minnow. Several anglers fish the top hook feather teaser with a spearing and the bottom of the rig baited with the squid and minnow combo.

There are croakers and weakfish in good numbers on the ocean in the area of Brigantine Inlet. The closest to the beach they are usually caught is in eighteen feet of water. Most of the reported catches this week were in the twenty-eight to thirty-five foot depths. Start your fishing day half way between the Little Egg Bell Buoy and the WR2 buoy. Finding pods of fish on the fish finder is usually the best idea even before dropping a line in the water. A pompano style rig that we designed to catch schoolie striped Bass from Graveling Point in the Spring is turning out to be the hot croaker rig. This rig is tied with a pair of 92642-1/0 gold hook on dropper loops 6” in length. The first loop is 6” off of the bottom sinker snap and the loops are spaced about 6” apart. Bait this rig with long slender strips of squid if you are drifting a pod of fish that could be weakfish. Otherwise, squid and clams catch the croakers just fine. You want an extra edge?, then Bloodworms will give you just that, but most cases the additional expense of bloodworms isn’t necessary.

I imagine that Marshelder Channel is producing it’s share of weakies, but anglers have been really tight lipped and are not sharing too much information this week. Little Sheepshead Creek is producing weakies off of the bridge by night fishing anglers. Occasionally, there is a three to five pound weaky caught, but most of the fish in the Sheepshead Creek are just barely legal size. Anglers continue to catch weakfish in the Mullica River and along the West bank of the Great Bay. Largest weakfish weighed this morning were 4 1/2 and 5 1/2 lbs. The weakies are being caught as far back into the river as Collins Cove which is East of the Garden State Parkway Bridge. There is a little group of boats that is fishing the bar that separates the shallow water of the Collins Cove and the deeper water of the river. Almost all of the weakfish action has been during the earlier morning hours and by 8:00am, most of the action is over. Shedders are the best bait and Chestnut Neck boat yard has quite a few. I still have my fingers crossed in hopes of getting some shedder crabs by the weekend. If they don’t show, bloodworms are catching the weakfish just fine on smaller hook bait rigs and shad dart lures.

Hunters alert! As I guess you saw in last weeks news letter, the Fish and Wildlife Digests are running late. This afternoon, we received a letter from the State informing us that they anticipate receiving the first delivery of digests on or about August 17. They expect that every licensing agent will receive their allotment of digests by the end of that week. A new date of September 17 has been set as the last day to get in the deer permits. Also, a notice was included that I will quote directly. “I’d like to try to clear up a misconception that permits are issued on a first come - first served basis through the mail-in lottery. This is totally incorrect. Once all of the applications are keyed into the computer, they are given a random number. The lottery is then run using those random numbers and the computer does not know which applications were received first. Everyone has plenty of time to send in his or her application for the lottery.”, Frank Tourine Business Manager