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How’s about some fresh Fluke Marsala?

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What a great day. Pete landing that beauty on the first drift set the tone until the wind picked up. There were still fish to be caught after that, but it was tough conditions.

In any event, I'd do that every day of the week if the good Lord would allow :)
 
Anyway, sailed today with my “Howard Beach crew. “ Gorgeous ocean, a bit too overcast for my liking. I prefer a bright, clear sky when we sail deep. Though we caught plenty of shorts in the 17 - 18.9” range, we had ZERO keepers through the entire morning’s outgoing. Waited thru the slack and found much better results on the incoming. We slowly built a catch of 6 nice keeps, with my 5 and 5.75lb fish the two best of the day. Also a smattering of very decent biscuits. Not the overall results we were looking for, but way better than a poke in the eye. As is usual recently, a very tentative bite today caused a bunch of dropped fish that really did feel like they would keep.
 
hit the deep fluke drops today with lots & lots of shorts with two keepers..made a move inshore had our limit in a three hours ..with a couple BSB & one fat fat fat trigger fish..back at the dock before 1pm..
 
great day today,,not only was the fishing off the hook & the big boat is back ..boy did I miss riding heavy in the water...

back to fishing ,,started off with short shorts & more shorts.. Hit a small wreck & was able to pick three keepers off..when to a deeper spot with good life all shorts 18" fish everywhere ..

went back inshore & game on had one over limit for a three man crew ..half the fish were over 4lbs but under 5lbs the others were 19" to 21" left them biting ..
 
First - Kudos to Chef Ken for braving not only a nasty gout attack earlier this week but now a head cold that had him banged up, but not banged out. He's as good as it gets in the crew department- and great company.

So we headed out through a pretty crummy inlet, and bounced our way offshore at a very stately 16kts to some quasi-open bottom that I like. Once on the grounds it wasn't really that bad at all. In fact though the breeze was blowing at a steady 12-15mph, with a wind chop on top of a decent swell, we only needed 2oz bucks to hold in 65'. Made two long drifts right over my best numbers, but only a few fat 18" toss-backs and a lonely 14.5" biscuit.

Yeah, um, that hunch of mine was a complete dud. So off to my "home" deep grounds we steamed. Once there, no freakin' way two ounce jigs were gonna work, and we segued up thru the sizes 'til we got to 5oz. Good to go! The issue was that similar to a recent trip, we were drifting East and the tide was running under the boat, to the West. This will not give the bait a natural presentation.

First two drifts N/G, several fat shorts, but nothin' for the box. Ugggh. Had to really study my plotter and figure out a different drift line. So made the adjustment, and what do ya know? Two fat keepers on that drift - right into the bleed box they went! Nice to see results. Kept on that drift line pretty much for the rest of the trip - resulted in a filled out boat limit to 5lbs by 12:30. I was pistol-hot early, but Ken came thru late to finish up the limit, boxing several real beauties in a row on his candy apple red/gold CTS BS702. Nice rod, btw!

The color of the day was White Glow - in a 6" worm, fished not over a bucktail, rather, just a plain old 5oz sinker on the bottom of the B/S. I employed a trick that Brian/Flukerr recently showed me - on a fast drift, lengthen the dropper loop. He beat me up pretty thoroughly earlier this season, with 3 fat fish to 5lbs+, while I whiffed the trip away on keepers - on a day with conditions remarkably similar to today. So what I did was make up the B/S with a VERY long dropper, then cut one side of the loop right at the knot - and then snelled my hook onto the long now-open dropper loop line. 14" up from the sinker as always, and about 12" worth of cut dropper to the hook. Really worked great today. Thanks Brian for the lesson. Old dogs CAN learn new tricks!

Its nice when conditions look like crap, and yet a carefully executed plan rescues the day. It doesn't always happen that way. Some days are just a tooth-pull, despite the best efforts of the Capt. and crew. Not today, though.

My happy place:

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And now the "Happy Recap" (line borrowed from the late Bob Murphy, the greatest of Met announcers):

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