The Fishing Line: No Complaints

No Complaints. Wouldn’t that be a good name for a boat right about now? Seems most anglers are finding success. Reports find flounder, sea bass, blues, stripers, sharks, weakies, and even a cod.
Folks at Frank’s Boats are advising minnows as the best bait for flounder and if you run into bluefish, any kind of silver metal will work. Bluefish are school fish and can be anywhere. Most of the flounder are still being caught in the intercoastal between markers 309 to 339. Sources report that a 6-pound flounder was caught at marker 318. Conditions are improving and the bite should also.
Grassy Sound reports Turtle Creek “was on fire.” Flounder everywhere on different baits, both tides.
The Haubois Crew, Court House caught 3 keeper flounder to 20 inches at the top of the tide fishing with green swim tail Gulp and minnows on a split flounder rig. Kevin Coates, Southampton, Pa. caught a 20 inch flounder in Turtle Creek, outgoing tide on a minnow and E.J. Pellecchia, Hatboro, Pa. caught 2 keeper flounder and 5 throwbacks on minnows and a bucktail. John Casey of Southampton, Pa. fishing the top of the tide with minnows behind Avalon caught a 21” flounder and 3 throwbacks.
The Hertkorns, Cherry Hill, caught a weakie and 2 short flounder fishing near the Stone Harbor toll bridge. Don Loesch and Bob Hubler, Green Creek caught flounder and blue fish on mackerel in Turtle Creek.
Captain Frank W. Breakell, Brynnie-B, fished with Andy Majka of Lake Forrest, Ill. and hit a few areas behind Avalon using herring, minnows, squid, and mackerel for bait. The southerly breeze against the incoming tide made for great drifts along the sod banks for flounder. Andy landed flatties of 18, 18.5 and 22 inches. Captain reports that a 22 inch flounder had a big sore on its dark side that looked like micobacteriosis. He put that one back into the water. They came home with 4 other fat flounder for the table. Captain says the water was reading 71 degrees.
Inshore fishing for sea bass reached a peak this week and South Jersey Marina charter boat Cape Queen fished on top of wrecks three times and each time came in with a real nice catch. Kate Mote from Sewell, with her family and friends caught 51 keeper sea bass to put in the cooler and had fun catching over 150 throwbacks.
Tom Siciliano from Little Egg Harbor Twp. and his party called ‘The Sunrise Anglers’ enjoyed an action packed day bringing in 230 sea bass. The group told Captain, they have never caught that many fish at one time before. The Darnell Groomes party, Philadelphia had a productive trip, too. They brought home 67 sea bass. The Cape Queen also found 6 ling and a nice cod.
Captain Ray, Cape May, was pleasantly surprised to find good weak fish action, the best weakfishing he has seen in many years with fish 17 to 20 plus inches with the biggest 25 inches long. Flies on sinking line accounted for the most fish with clouser, deceiver, and jiggie flies producing best. Chartreuse/white, yellow/white, pink/white, and olive/white were the most productive. For spin anglers, small mirrow lures and jig heads with gulp mullet tails worked. Ray even caught a few nice weakfish at Cape May Point off the beach on a fly, biggest 20 1/2 inches long.
Ray says the weakfish make up for the lack of striper activity and bluefish and sea herring are around in good numbers. He even caught and released a keeper tog that took a fly.
Captain Frank Schafer, Insomniac Guide Service, met Andy and his son Kevin and headed to the flats. He set the skiff up and poled on a crystal clear grass flat that was 6 to 10 inches deep watching bass tail as they fed on crabs and chased bait fish, throwing head wakes in the shallow water. They were armed with top water plugs. Kevin had a bass track his plug and the fish struck four or five times knocking it into the air and back on in again. With water flying everywhere the bass chose a direction and ripped drag from the reel but after a few minutes, the fish tired and came boat side. Later in the day, they went for flounder and found some tog, too. (Remember tog is out of season. Throw them back.)
Tri-State anglers held their first fluke tourney of the year on May 26. Large fish were hard to come by but numerous legal fish were landed. Tourney winners were Bill (bucktail willie) Shillingford, first place 2.7-pounds; second place John O’Conner, 2.52-pounds; third place Leon Kordowski, 2.15-pounds.
The State of New Jersey has scheduled hearings to gather public comment on the Public Information Document (PID) to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for Black Drum: July 12, 2012; 7 p.m., Galloway Township Branch Library, 306 East Jimmie Leeds Road, Russ Allen, 748-2020.
Send your reports and pictures to cmiller@cmcherald.com. There are terrific pictures coming in but not room for all of them. All pictures submitted are posted online at www.capemaycountyherald.com.