Soooooo.......Got out around midnight friday night...fished until 3am...Nothing but skates and doggies....Up at 7:30 sat morning headed in picked up some bunker and finger mullet from Bev and was back on the beach by 8:30 or so.....Fished ALL DAY with NOTHING...big fat skunk until the sun set then we managed a few doggies. While sitting on the beach I got a text message from my cousin, he had no idea I was at the beach fishing...and guess where he was....just up the road at the hotel right next to the place with the antique bus on 50...He had the boat and was heading offshore on Sunday...Of course....there was room for me
(well dad too but dad said no way, he wasn't puking all day) 6:30 we met at the ramp in
OC I loaded up some soda and food for the day. Oh yeah forgot to mention that I wasn't planning a boat trip, so all my rods for the boat were at home....Had to hit all-tackle as soon as they opened, picked up an 89.95 Combo with a Diawa Millionaire Classic on a 6'6" MH Ugly Stick (rated 12-20#) I had the reel spooled with 100 yards of 65# power pro and Then headed down to the ramp. Loaded up we were heading out of the inlet just before sunrise. What were we greeted with? But birds, about 500 yards out of the inlet. We managed 7 Stripers 31-34", all Jigged up on Sting Silvers. Birds and fish didn't stay around long, we headed out looking for more birds...We found them about 6 miles offshore. More birds than I've seen on the water in a long time. We had blues and stripers finning all around us. Too bad we were outside the EEZ, oh well....it was FUN...Between 4 of us we caught well over 100 fish. Smallest striper was definitely above the 28" minimum, Blues...well blue after blue after blue all in the 10-12# range...Let me tell you what a blast that was on such light tackle. 4 of us fishing and we were doubles more times than I could remember...Trips.....OMG, it was insane...probably couldn't count the trips either...We fished hard trying to get that Quad and finally we managed a quad not too long before we called it a day. 3 10# blues and a 30" striper....It was crazy...4 of us trying to keep lines from getting tangled.....trying not to trip over each other.....all on light tackle.....it was a music you don't often hear...4 different reels peeling off drag all at the same time....We caught fish on the top, on the bottom, halfway through dropping our jig to the bottom, 1' from the surface as we were retrieving it to drop it again....I have not had that much fun on fish in YEARS.......Imagine the cooler when we were finished and cleaning out the boat..... Big White Igloo 128 Quart Cooler...FILLED to the top....smallest fish in the box was probably a 26" Blue...and that was the only one below 30" We counted as we loaded...13 Blues and 7 Stripers that we kept....and SOOOOOO many nice stripers thrown back (well I know we could've only kept one more but) because of the EEZ :( Oh well...it was great fun...Now I have a cooler up front with my two stripers in it that I have to clean this morning.......Fun stuff, I get to smell like fish again....I lost most of the pictures due to a Memory card error, however I have 3 one of my 34" fish right after it was netted (actually still in the net) and two of my cousin fighting something (don't really remember what it was) I'll get them resized today and loaded up so you can see....Oh...Couple other notes....CHOPPY was the word for the day.....I decided to chum up my coffee at one point, but like a pro, I had the rod in my hand a min later catching fish again....We did head out to the african queen for an hour or so to try our luck with some sea bass...only a couple shorts and some doggies....then we went after the birds again......