seamoneyfishing is back.
Sometime last fall, there came a time where I had to renew the hosting fees for seamomeyfishing.com, however I wasn't making any money off the site and I said screw it, Ill let it expire. I don't know if I regret letting it expire or not, but now comes a time when I want it back.
So here we are in August 2014. My fishing time is way limited these days since going out and getting a full time job. Now I have to be at work at 5am, 6 days a week... thatll fuck your fishing time right up. I still think about fishing a lot and all I want to do is catch nice fish. I still have all the knowledge I once had, just not the time. I fished like a bonafide retard from 2005 until 2013 in the philly jersey area, places where no sane human would spend their time chasing fish after fish.
Im lucky enough to have some crazy ass friends who still fish like bonafide retards. Where do I start?
Memorial day Sunday was calm as shit on the delaware bay. I know that because I took these pictures
Thats my buddy Romo, and we're on our way out 2 miles into the delaware bay to fish for Black Drum. We had half a bushel of clams and confidence that we could put ourselves over some drum, and we did just that. We caught 3 drum between the 2 of us, with the biggest one going maybe 40 pounds. We didn't get the 60 pound slay ride drum we were after, but we were both satisfied with catching the target species. I posted a video on youtube of 2 of the catches, as well as a cownose ray.
Ray you say? The guys shark fishing the beaches right now have been covered up in death rays for the past few weeks, but theres plenty of sharks mixed in. Big sharks this year, many exceeding 9 feet and 300 pounds. Thats a big ass shark!
I shark fished a few times in June and July, the first trip I made was awesome, I fished with some friends and their children and had triple headers for 3 hours. By the end of the night I was snagging and casting out live bunker, which would get hit minutes after hitting bottom. I lost a very nice ST early in the night, we all had some action around that time. But after midnight the shit went wild and we had schools of bunker pinned to the beach with sharks under them, at one point one came up to the shoreline as we were trying to land a big sandbar. Some of the Sandbar's that night were very large... The largest one, I didn't even go down the beach to check out, because I was so tired from running around, chasing runs and trying to land fish. I did get a very good look at the ~8' ST that our friends son got, I was trying to land it by grabbing it by the tail when it turned 180 and came right at my legs. It happened so quick the only way to avoid ending up with my foot in its mouth was to jump straight ahead from where I was standing, which was over the shark and into the ocean. It was a great night.
The following week, I had plans to guide 2 customers to some sharks, both from Doylestown and had never caught a shark. My buddy Mike came along as first mate. We left at 2:30 in the afternoon, a saturday. I had to work that morning, otherwise we would have left earlier. We bought a bushel of fresh bunker on our way down, straight outta the gillnet. Met up with the guys, fished for 6+ hours, watched guys to our left catch a 6' ST, talked to a friend who was a few beaches away.. said a couple rays, one dude to his left got a big brown. Shitty night, but it was in good company.
Sharks are probably the most interesting fishery we have right now. It's been a hit or miss summer for everyone I know, some nights they're just not there, but if you hit it right you can catch a monster.. The next paragraph is about monsters.
My buddy who will remain D$ got a 22' contender this year, and my other buddy, Q, bought a 27' century. The 2 of them caravanned out about a mile off the beach and hooked up on ST's real quick one day. I talked to Tan (who was on D$'s boat) on the phone while they were doubled up on "rays", but the rays turned out to be ST's. They got one to the boat, and got this picture. Pretty much a monster, but probably the smallest shark hooked as its the only one to come to the surface, many others have been fought for hours only to be broken off due to equipment failure or using too light of tackle. Q fought one for 2-4 hours depending on who you ask, and eventually said fuck this and broke it off.
The night after I took the 2 guys from Doylestown out, me and Mike met up with our buddy D$, who suggested we sleep on his friends boat, and fish off his boat in the morning. We agreed, and the next day, went out and caught a few very small browns and did battle with a very large ST. We fought it for 2-3 hours on pretty light gear, and eventually it broke our 40lb braid. Theres no use in trying to explain how big it was, basically for the 2.5 hours the shark just held tight. He'd swim one way for 15 minutes, then another way for 30, and finally our gear failed. I have a buddy named Romo who was on vacation at the delaware shore earlier this summer. He has a Hobie which he uses a lot, and I think he used it every day down there. He wasn't getting into any crazy bites, but did make it to the outer wall in the Delaware Bay where he got mostly short blackfish, fluke and a couple triggers. On the last day, him and our friend Mike went out with steel leaders and a new target species, and hooked into sharks "within 5 minutes". It sounds like there are a lot.... I mean a lot of sharks out there. The ones they hooked in their hobies were all big, Im not sure exactly how many it was, but they both fought sharks for hours that day. Romo got awesome, awesome footage of not 1, but 2 big sharks breach the surface while on his yak. Check out the video below, but know that a 2nd video which hasnt been uploaded yet is coming that is slightly better. Thats your summer 2014 inshore shark report. Less sharks on the beaches, but a ton just off the beach.
Flatheads on the Schuylkill have been fishing at an average level all year... no big bites after any of those rains, just inconsistent action and lots of small fish. August is the time though, and my friend James has been doing real well on his boat fishing late nights during the week. This week he caught a 28, 37 and 42lber... Damn James! 40lb flatheads are special fish in the Schuylkill, true beasts of the river, and to do battle with one is usually reserved for those who put in the most time. Out of the group of friends I have flathead fished with since 2007, this is the 3rd or 4th 40 we have ever caught, a 47 in 2012, a 55 in 2013, a 39_14 which is debatably 40 in May of this year, and now a 42 this week. Other 40 pound fish have been caught out of the schuylkill, in all stretches of the river to boot. I believe the PA state record of 48.6 is going to be upped this year, and upped again in following years until we see fish in the 70's. My buddy pointed out to me one night that 4 other states to our west have state record fish in the 70's. I don't know if the schuylkill could produce a 70, as thats a really, really big fish for such a sterile river, but the Susquehanna and Delaware both could easily grow a 70. The Susquehanna especially, way more 40+ pound flatheads come out of the susky than the skuke. The delaware too, I posted a picture awhile back of a 40+lb delaware river Flathead. The guy didn't weigh it but the pic showed a long, girthy fish, easily 40+. These fish are still relatively new to our rivers, and are only growing with time. One night a couple weeks back I was fishing the skuke, got a bite at about 12:20am which turned out to be a high 30's, low 40's pound flathead, but snapped my hook as we were trying to land it. I didnt realize how big it was until just after I lost it. At first glance I said thats a 30. quickly after I said whoa thats 35. After it busted our hook we realized damn that coulda been 45, and my final guess on it was somewhere between 35 and 45... Im waiting to see another 50lb flathead, and this wasn't it. Still would of been my 2nd biggest fish, but damn. oh well. I have a hunch that the 42 caught this week is that same fish, but I base that on nothing other than they were about the same size, in the same stretch of river. Here are pics of james with a 37 and 42. The Schuylkill Produces.... finally.
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Bowfins, snakeheads, bass, pickerel, amongst other things are biting OK over the bridge in Jersey. My buddy James lives on the Jersey side of the Delaware, and uses his hobie to fish a lot of smaller waters over there. I've known james for about a year now, it wasn't until last year that we all networked together and started trading spots and catching fish together. In the last year, New Jersey has been my primary freshwater fishing home if Im fishing for any kind of gamefish. Recently Ive fished with James and Romo on some random waterbodies where we've had slowish action for snakeheads and Bowfins. We target these fish with jumpfrogs that james buys from a guy in Malaysia. These lures are cool, they look like a popper but have a skirted double hook in the back, rather than 2 sets of tebles. The one day I was lucky enough to come across a snakehead fryball while paddling some spatterdock. It was like catching a snakehead off a fryball, just casted over it, popped it a few times, bam, 28" snakehead. It was a skinny fish, 6lbs, but I was pumped. That day we ran into a Bass Pro named Grant Goldbeck, he was prefishing the some waterbody that we were snakehead fishing. We talked to him for a good while and went our seperate ways, but it was a cool experience. I just looked at the standings for todays 1st day of weigh ins, and Goldbeck has 1 fish at 2_15. Hopefully he uses the information we gave him to win the tournament! Ha, fat chance. We've also been targeting bowfin with the jumpfrogs but are having a tough time getting the fish in the boat. We can get good hits from fins on top but they are tricky bastards with their 100000000 years of evolution. Still, got a decent video of a fin hitting my frog, missing it, then coming back 2 seconds later and eventually taking the double hook right off my jumpfrog. Catching fins is far easier with cutbait. Heres a cutbait fin, some jumpfrog fish, and a video of a lost fin on a jumpfrog.
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more to come.
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