Scott'sBait & Tackle
   Weekly Bulletin for
Thursday, August 26, 1999

If you want to catch fluke in the Great Bay and Tuckerton Bay this weekend, be prepared to work hard for the few fish you are going to catch. Anglers continue to catch fluke, but they have been reporting very few fish caught per hours fished. Just to keep your hopes up, I’ll you about John Kita’s fluke that he caught around the Fish Factory on a squid and minnow. His fluke weighed eight pounds fifteen ounces and was twenty eight inches in length. One of those in the cooler can really brighten up your day. Most of the bay fluke reported the past few weeks were caught by anglers fishing the old Coast Guard station and Fish Factory area as well as the deeper water between the South end of Long Beach Island and the sod banks along Little Sheepshead and Big Sheepshead creeks. A couple of three plus pound fluke were also caught in the Marshelder channel this week. If that area is closer to your home port, then it is definitely worth it to make a few drifts before making your way out closer to the Little Egg Inlet.

Ocean going anglers found plenty of little fluke in the area of the WR2 buoy, specifically in fifty two to fifty six feet of water. With a little effort, they were able to catch enough fluke to amass a few keepers. The fluke fishing action improved on the reef sites this week, providing anglers with a much better ratio of keepers to throwback size fish. Not as many sharks and skates were reported, but the sea robins more then made up for the lack of other bothersome fish. Top and bottom rigs are still the preferred tackle baited with squid, minnows and spearing. A few anglers that are proficient in the use of a cast net are using fresh or live baby bunker as bait on the top and bottom rigs and are doing quite well at putting larger fluke in the cooler.

Hot fish topic of the week is still croakers. Don’t let anybody con you and say that they aren’t any good. Croakers are a fine tasty fish! I am a fried fish kinda guy, so I can confirm that they are good eating when fried. The most important thing about croakers is to keep them very cold with too much ice. A block of ice and a couple of bags of cubes are necessary for a croaker fishing trip. If they get a little warm, the meat will taste strong like a larger weakfish or bluefish. If kept icy cold, they are twice as easy to fillet and taste as mild as sea bass or white perch. Several anglers are getting pretty good at catching croakers. Some of their tricks are about to be told. First, anchoring the boat on a pod of croakers increases the catch by creating and holding a pod of fish. If you get the fish working, you can hold the school of fish at the boat like a school of mackerel. Second, the croakers love salted mackerel strips of bait. It is necessary to keep an oily bait in the water, so be sure to change the mackerel strips quite regularly. Cut the mackerel fillets in strips half inch by two inches long. Fish the strip baits on a small hook high low rig in the style of a pompano, perch or Blackfish type rig. Third, use a four ounce Hopkins lure with a treble hook as your sinker. You will be pleasantly surprised on just how many fish will take the Hopkins lure, too.