Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating

Yesterday, I took my 11 year old, 2 friends, and their dads, out to Block on a 6-pack boat. We had heard that the striper fishing is so bad, the fleet isn't even going to SWL with wire. We tried another spot, got all the blues you could want (kids liked it), and we got 2 bass on parachute jigs, but lost them both right at the boat.

Then we switched to sea bassing, which I had heard had been stupidly easy. We got 18 keepers among the 6 of us, but it took a few hours, we had some slow drifts, we had some productive drifts. The action was steady enough that it kept my interest, the kids had trouble with the method - heavy jigs being jigged very aggressively near the bottom. It wasn't easy to hold bottom, and the jigging action was a lot to ask of a kid. The 3 kids gave up the rods early, the dads would hook up and let them reel it in. My son is getting old enough where he doesn't like that, but he had trouble with the jigging, he was hoping for a slower drift where we could fish bait on the bottom. What impressed me, was the size of the sea bass, we didn't catch any keepers that were anywhere near the minimum, these were beasts. To be expected when using huge metal jigs I guess.

My son did get his biggest fluke, captain estimated at about 5 pounds.

Beautiful day out there,

Good eating for the next few days.