I reached out into the cloud to a person I met last year, a guy named Ken who may have a similar condition as the rest of us known as fishing addiction. He has a place in Wildwood so with that I had found a way to justify fishing for days, that is, with a place to sleep 10 minutes from the fishing spots. Drive down to Cape May on Friday after work to hang out and chunk some Bunker on a Cape May beach. The bunker I picked up is real fresh, Off the Hook in Cape May gets good Bunker, as I have recently found out. I meet up with Ken and we fish from 5pm to a little after 8pm, which would be the last of the outgoing and start of the incoming tide. We catch trash fish, Spiny Dogs and a Skate, we only go through 5 Bunker. We knew from the start that the Surf is deader than Satan himself, but figured it was worth a shot. I might add that there is a WNW blowing at about 25mph, which would do nothing for us other than make it feel colder.
My plan for the weekend was to go out on my buddy Dano's boat on Saturday and chunk the bay, and then fish Sunday somewhere for Tog, either from shore or from party boat. My plans were tied loosely, open to change, the best idea that could enter my brain before the time to fish would be the one to go with. Ken earns himself a spot on the boat and the 3 of us push off the dock around 7am Saturday Morning. Its still blowing out of the WNW at a good clip, 20mph or so, and the High Temp was forecasted to be in the lower 40's. We have 40 fresh bunker, heading west through the Cape May Canal. We come around the last bend and the ferry terminal comes into sight. The Canal is calm, only a couple hundred feet across, no room for the wind to really kick up a lot of water, but as the Bay slowly comes into view it is clear that we are bearing down on the Black Gates of Mordor. Dano's boat is 21', which is nowhere near large enough to get out on the Bay at that time. We get about 10 feet
into the bay, which is equivalent to 3 waves to the face, before saying fuck this, doing a 180 and running back into canal. It's cool though, we knew this was going to happen, we were prepared. The wind forecast called for diminishing winds later in the day, so we would go out front along the Beaches of CM and WW and chunk our bunker and troll stretch 25's under the protection of the coastline and wait for the bay to calm down to fishable levels. West wind blowing off the east coast, calm water, you understand. It's still choppy out there but totally fishable... Dogfishable that is. Right now, anywhere you go along the beach, you're going to catch Spiney Dogfish. After about an hour or 2 of chunking (25' of water along the beach), and catching our share of Dogs, we went back inside to go make sure the Black Gates of Mordor were still closed... they were, in fact worse than the first time. So we stop by the Marina and grab some Trolling lures and we troll in front of Wildwood. We don't catch, but we do come across large schools of Bunker, which we snag and keep in our cooler just in case we do end up getting out on the bay. Theres boats everywhere out front, all people who couldn't get out on the bay most likely, all fishing out front for Dogfish. Well 3:45pm comes around and we make one more attempt at the Black Gates, and this time they're open. Unguarded and Open. We get out with little problem and in the last hour of the day are able to hit a 38lb Bass. Crazy save right there, I was pretty convinced we weren't making it out to the fishing grounds on this day.
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| Fillets off the 38lber |
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| Dano 38.6lber 11/15 |
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| Stomach Contents |
Something worth mentioning is there is a troll bite along our beaches. We didn't catch any but over the weekend many large fish were quietly boated while trolling off our South Jersey Beaches.
So feeling pretty defeated by a stubborn NW wind and an Angry Bay, we go have some drinks at Harbor View. Tomorrow would be a new day.
Sunday Sunday Sunday, goin fishing on a Long ass Jetty in the most southern part of NJ, off limits to the public. Fuck yea, Easy limit, no one else to compete with, thousands of hungry tautog waiting to commit suicide as soon as we drop down, this was going to be a good day. It was opening day... the limit now 6 fish per man. There are only so many spots to catch Tautog from Shore in NJ, especially during the 2nd half of November, but the Cape May Inlet is one of them. Oh don't worry though, everyone already knows that, based on the hundreds, literally hundreds of people who were out there on Sunday. The North Jetty is open to the Public to fish on, only catch is you have to walk a mile down the beach to get to it. Would you believe that over 100 people made that mile death walk on Sunday? In NJ we may call that fishing, but in life we call this the Asian Invasion. Yes, over 100 Asian people walked that mile to catch fish for themselves and their relatives, for it is only the beloved "Brack Feetch" that could cause a mass migration as this. No I am not racist, not any more racist than the average human being, but if you were to look at everyone on that jetty you would see that more than 9 out of 10 were asian. You would also see that not all of them were poaching Tog, despite the fact that many of them were. I have a hard time getting off the subject of Asians and Blackfish and poaching, but anyways, Ken and Myself found our way out onto the south jetty and fished for about 5-6 hours without a keeper fish. SIN!
How the hell did we go out there and not catch a single 15" Tog? We did get lots of shorts... and each broke off 2 nice fish, but it really wasn't our day and after losing about 30 hooks we would decide it a good idea to go try a bridge to the north. For the record, there were boats lined up along the entire jetty, leaving us the tip of the jetty to fish. Loaded with fish out there but challenging to land, pulling them straight up from 30'+ (perhaps more lie 50'+) along a wall of rocks. No excuses. We failed. We failed at the 2nd spot too. 2nd spot also was extremely pressured... 30 guys on a smallish bridge. The pressure on these fish is real. We caught somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 shorts all day. At one point while we were on the tip of the south jetty we had a boat collision right in front of us. I looked over and saw 2 boats side by side, they looked to be sharing crabs or food or something, both holding on to the other boat in a seemingly friendly manner, but it turned out no, it was some dumbass opening day shenanigans, too many boats in too little of a space, the video tells the story-
Dano is a beast. He fishes like a madman when the time is right, and when it comes to chunking cows he dials in. Hes been out more than a few times this fall and hes boated a 30+lber on every trip except for one, even on Saturday in an hours worth of fishing he still set up on a 38lb fish. I was out with him and our friend Mike last Sunday and we had a pretty great day considering how its been. We got 6 Bass, one fat short and 5 keepers going 15, 23, 34, 35, and 36lbs. Its been really really dreadfully slow out there, I know we got pretty lucky that day, most people are reporting skunks or just 1 or 2 fish. There are beasts out there though, fish to 59lbs have been weighed in since last weekend, the key is though you have to have luck on your side. Time is critical, the more hours you put in the better, I've been lucky to have gone twice, however in 2 trips I have caught just 2 stripers. 1 fat short and a 34lb fish. Heres a video showing all our fish last Sunday.
Also adding a few pics of some more Delaware Bay Cows 30-40lbs, all Dano right here.
I striper fished from the rocks at Barnegat Inlet twice this fall and didn't get a bite either time. I came across this video though of what Barnegat looks like when there are fish there...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NqmHjdnRwQ
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