Jersey Shore Reports for 2009

[Ed White]

Seeing as how the NY Bight guys have theiir own report thread, I thought I'd start a new thread for those of us who fish a little further south, say, from the tip of the Hook to the bottom of Ocean County, but anyone fishing from Jersey is welcome to post up a report, please be careful to be general in giving out locations, we don't want to burn anyone's spots here, some suggestions:
NoMoCo = North Monmouth County
SoMoCo = South Monmouth County
"The Hook" covers a lot of ground, same with IBSP, Island Beach State Park.

I'll start with the next post.

[Ed White]

Finally found my first decent bass of the season, out front in SoMoCo, Friday night. Found some boats working a pod of bunker, with some splashes here and there, stood on the end of a jetty and threw pencil poppers at them till I had a hit, small fish, took the pencil down 3' and then spit it. Two casts later the pencil just disappeared, and the drag was singin'. 24 lb fish, caught during one of our club tournaments, no less. Great fun, can't wait to do it again.

[wetflyguy]

Fished the Hook Sat. from 3rd parking lot to North Beach.
Soaked clams and threw plugs.
Nada!! Well was agood day testing plugs.
Carved a bunker and it swims good


Wet

[sadlsorz]

Hit Nomonco in the evening and quickly got in to the bite. Bass from 22-30#. The great thing is my buddies 8 year old son caught the 30#er. A great evening!!

[Ed White]

sadlsporz,
I'm guessing you were right near where I was fishing, the rockpiles, we slaughtered bass, who were slaughtering the bunker, for 3+ hours last evening, my arms hurt.
Hell, my whole body hurts. Tok home an 18 & a 23, which were 2 early fish, caught much larger fish later on, it was one to remember.

[cheech43]

Those are some nice lookin fish.
nice job

[sadlsorz]

Well after working on two horses this morning and deciding it was too friggin hot, I swung by to pick up my wife and son for some catch and release bassing. After breaking the inlet we didn't have to go far to find the bunker again. A half an hour later we had our first bass at 19#, and as you will see from the pic, a release of this one might not have worked out. After a while my wife wanted to give it a try,so I hooked a livey for her and snagged and dropped one for myself. Wouldn't you know that both rods went off at the same time and my wife had no clue what to do, so between me trying to fight mine and trying to help her, both fish came unbuttoned. My fault, I should have given her a tutorial. So lesson learned, and my son becoming miserable in the heat, we headed in.

[Ed White]

I must be living right or something, I have had an extremely good week, 4 trips to the water, 1 skunking, and bass on all other trips, including just one fish tonight, but a personal best for me, a 36 lb'er off the beach while standing on a sandbar in SoMoCo. What made it even sweeter was the fact that I walked past a couple hundred fishermen to get to a spot with room to fish in comfort, and hooked up with just my buddy nearby, weighed the fish, and sent her back on her way.

[JakeF]

Excellent! Good to hear you guys are getting into the fish! Point em north when you send em on their way

[sadlsorz]

Congrats on the personal best Ed!!! That's awesome.

[Ed White]

Thanks guys,
I still smile every time I think about it, which is a lot.....
I'll be going to my nephew's 8th grade graduation tonight at a place called "The Chapel By The Sea' in Manasquan tonight, would it be inappropriate to show up with Korkers and a plug bag?

[jimi4290]

CONGRATS TO YOU ED!!!! thats a mighty fine moo moo to pull in from the beach...oh...it may be a bad idea to wear the korkers to the graduation..but to have them on hand in the trunk along with a plug bag and surf rod for after the party sounds like a good idea to me.

[Roccus]

You deserve it, hard work has it's rewards... allways a good idea to be the only diner in town....Congrats on your P.B.

[chrowski]

Decided to give it a whirl on Friday the 13th. From a jetty, we could see just crazy action on the top of the water from about 500+ yards out. Every second these bunker being destroyed by fish got closer and closer. Within an hour and a half, we could see it was striped bass lighting up the bunker just inside casting range. Everyone starting casting and everyone started hooking up.
I caught my very first striped bass after over 1year of persuing the fish with no luck at all. My first fish was 25lbs. Everyone was destroying the bass on topwater plugs. There were so many bass that when the plug hit the water it was being tossed out of the water in random directiong b/c so many bass were trying to take it at the same time. I lost my plug on my second fish, which was easily above the weight of my first fish, when my friends grabbed the line in a helping effort only to snap the line off of the bass I had foul hooked just behind the head.
Since I was fresh outa plugs (never thought they'd work for me, let alone catch me a fish), I just walked up the jetty and picked up one of the MANY live bunker stuck in the rocks of the jetty, beached, trying to escape the stripers. I hooked him in the dorsal fin, and within 45 seconds in the water I had a 16lb striper. My third fish of the day.
As quick as it came, it was gone. After that only the occasional 20-30lb fish was being pulled out every 10 minutes or so, still pretty good fishing for a jetty, but it wasn't anything near what I had just experience. Pictures to follow shortly.

I'm afraid I'm hooked for life now...

For some odd reason, the boats following the stripers, didn't seem to be catching any at all. Maybe they didn't have plugs???

[Ed White]

Pretty wild scene out there, isn't it Tom?
I managed to be 10 minutes late 3 different times yersterday evening, with only 1 blowup on a pencil popper to show for 4 hours of fishing, but the coast was alive with fish and fishermen.