Cape May Fishing Report July 26th, 2008

We left the slip at around 7:00 AM and headed for the number 9 and 10 buoys because the water was a little warmer over in that part of the bay. We were heading right into the wind on the way out, but it wasn’t too bad. We had the lines in the water by 8:00. The water temperature was around 68-69 degrees. Low Tide was at 9:22. We caught a few skates, then at around 9:12AM as I was untangling Jim’s line from mine I finally caught my first keeper flounder of the summer. It was a 19 inches and weighed in at 2 lbs 11 oz, and I named him dinner.
Once the incoming tide got going the drift really started to pick up, because the wind and tide were in the same direction. We put the drift sock out but it didn’t slow us down all that much. Jim caught a little snapper blue, and before the drift picked up we had quite a few skates.
Deck Boss Jim took the helm for the ride back to the Yacht Club, and backed “Offshore Bites” into the slip for the first time.The sad thing is… there is only 5 weeks left in the summer flounder season. Hopefully the water warms up and some fish move in.

Cape May Offshore Fishing Report July 12th, 2008

The “Island Girl” left the slip at the Bree Zee Lee around 11:30 PM on Friday night for a long trip to the “Toms Canyon” area, which is just a short 110 mile run from the Cape May inlet. After we got past the 2CM buoy just outside the inlet Capt Andy punched in the numbers for the canyon, and put the boat on auto pilot. We were cruising at a comfortable 18 knots. After that we all headed for the bunks, and we woke up when we got there. That autopilot is great. OK well if you think we all went to sleep you’re pretty gullible. Somebody needs to keep an eye on the radar to make sure we don’t run into anything, like the big cruise ship we came across. The seas were flat, it was perfect weather.

We made it up to Tom’s Canyon and had the lines in the water by around 4:30 AM, which was before first light. We had 2 Penn International 70 reels, and 4 smaller Penn International 30’s. The target species was White and Blue marlin. We had something break the surface and take a look at around 7:00 AM, but we are not sure what it was. The water temperature was between 79 and 83 degrees at various spots in the canyons. Around 8:00 all hell broke lose when we hooked up with a large Blue Marlin in the 400 lb range. Of course it hit on one of the smaller reels, with 10 lb test on it, but we managed to land him. See you are gullible, the reels had 50 lb test on it, and we only had it on the hook for about 5 minutes max. We made same mistakes the cost us the fish, we didn’t have the rest of the lines cleared fast enough, Rob left the helm to clear a line, Capt. Andy jumped into the Captains chair, he couldn’t back down on the fish until the other lines were cleared. As the fish swam past the boat and was heading towards the bow of the boat, Walt the angler was screaming to Andy to turn the boat to the Starboard side. Andy was trying feverishly to get the boat to turn by working the engines in opposite directions. The boat would not turn and many expletives were being thrown around. And soon the fish was gone. When Rob left the helm and Andy had jumped in, Andy didn’t realize we were trolling with the autopilot on. This is why the boat would not turn. The autopilot was fighting every move.

So then we trolled around for a little while more before calling it a day and heading back in. A little while more means we kept trolling until 5:00 PM before heading in. The ride in only took about 3 hours because we could run at a faster speed in the daylight and the seas were flat. We made it back to the slip by around 8:00 PM.

Capt Randy and Jim took “Just One More” out for some fluking but didn’t get any keepers. Chuck inadvertently went offshore with out a boat when he found a strong rip current while in the water at Wildwood Crest beach, but that’s whole other story.

Cape May Fishing Report July 4th, 2008

“Offshore Bites” stayed in the entire holiday weekend, because I had to get some stuff done for work. However Capt. Randy and Jim took “Just One More” out on July 4th up the bay towards the Sixty Foot Slough. Capt. Dave, Chuck and Buddy also headed out and up the bay. Capt. Randy got his first keeper fluke of the season. I don’t think Capt. Dave and Crew caught any keepers, and they explored the bay a little bit more.