12/23

Fished off Seaside New Jersey on Sunday from 1 to 4pm. There were reports of Bluefin sightings close to shore for the few days prior, and I was not planning this trip at all until Saturday night when I saw a video of what was more than likely Bluefin crashing bait half a mile to a mile off the beach. I had seen pictures on Instagram and Facebook of 50-150lb Bluefins earlier in December, but found out that those guys were fishing well out of range of a Kayak. Saturday though, the switch flipped, I called Romo who had been planning on fishing Sunday for "marsh creek muskies" and asked if he was down. He's like me, ready to pounce on whatever fresh information pops up, ready to change tactics just the night before, and with that, it was determined, we'd be be Bluefin fishing.

Sunday comes along, I sleep til 10am, awakened by the call of Romo saying he had just spent 100$ on Orca's and flouro, and I quickly got up and hauled ass to the shore. 1pm we're there on the beach ready to launch.

I should warn you that I am a very aggressive fisherman. I have no self control when it comes to certain things. I knew going into this day the odds of running into or even seeing a bluefin were low. Way low. Going into this I figured I had a 1 in 10 chance of seeing a bluefin crash the surface within eyesight. I also was fairly certain that if nothing else there would be Blues and Schoolies to be caught, but just the idea of hooking a bluefin from kayak was more than enough to get us to the beach and kayaking the ocean.

We didn't see a single Bluefin. I had given up hope pretty quickly at that idea after seeing less and less life the further offshore we went. There were schools of Gannets flying in circles, hundreds of yards above the ocean, circling, as if pointing us to where a school of herring might be hanging deep. I was jigging 7" Flukes in about 50 feet of water a mile off the beach and caught a Fluke. The fishing was tough most of the day, all I brought was a tuna rod and a couple jigs I had just bought, some RonZ imitation looking things, and a pack of 7" white flukes. I had a few missed bites, some of which were dogfish, others Bluefish, and Im convinced at least one other missed bite was a Fluke. Two times I had my soft plastic bitten in half by Bluefish, both on the troll.

Romo brought a slightly more diverse box of artificials and caught a decent sized Bass (28" roughly) trolling a deep diving Xrap. He had a few more lost fish on the troll before dusk when the Bass started feeding on the surface. For about the last half hour of daylight there were flocks of birds picking bait with bass under them, and we briefly had a hot bite, getting a dozen or more bass between the 2 of us. Here are some pictures and a link to the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIGn_25CE8Y