Cape May Fishing Report 8/17, 8/18  2012

I drove down to the boat Saturday morning. The weather forecast wasn’t that great so I was no hurry to get down there. My plan was to do some maintenance on the boat. Last week I had noticed some oil in the bilge, the XM Antenna was bad, and I had an oil pressure alarm switch that I wanted to replace.

Randy, Jim and Dave rolled into the marina around 11:00 they were going out fishing, I told them I was sticking around to work on the boat.

I think the oil in the bilge is coming from the trim motor, which uses hydraulics to tilt the out drive up and down. This just might be the O ring in the reservoir bottle. I told Rich from R&J Marine service to take a look at it this week. I also showed Rich the Oil Pressure Alarm switch I had, he informed it wasn’t the alarm switch.  I had the oil pressure gauge switch. So the guys at Highway Marine had ordered the wrong part. I told Rich to order the right one and install that too.

Then I started to tackle the XM antenna. At some points I’d get a low signal, so I thought maybe I just had a bad connector. I cut the cable and tried several new BNC connectors but could not get the signal. Finally I pulled the wire all the way back through the radar arch and pulled it off. I asked Jim to hold the antenna up one more time while I tested it; he noticed it was full with water. So the antenna is being shipped back to Garmin today.

Randy, Jim and Dave didn’t make it too far on their fishing excursion, it was too rough out there so they just fished by the yellow cans in front of the Coast Guard Station. They didn’t catch anything.

The Bree Zee Lee did have there Flounder Tournament on Saturday. There were only 18 boats entered. I didn’t see many fished get weighed in, or on the board. The biggest fish was over 7 pounds.

Saturday afternoon we stopped in the Harbor View for some cocktails and wings. Then we headed back to the campers. I feel asleep in a chair on the deck, when I woke the guys were gone. I called them on the phone; they told me they were at South Jersey looking at the big boats. I tried to make it over there but there was incredible traffic. There had been a fire at the Haborside Café which is in South Jersey marina. They had to close the road, which is the main road in and out of Cape May. I finally made it back to my boat and went to sleep.

The weather was better on Sunday; however my head was still a little foggy. I headed out to the Cape May Reef for a few hours. The fishing was slow; I only caught a few shorts, couple of skates and a sea bass. I was back in the slip by noon.

The Mid-Atlantic 500 takes place this week, this is one of the biggest sport fishing tournaments on the East Coast. All the big boys come into town. Here’s a picture of the biggest sport fishing boat I’ve ever seen.

This is brand new 82 foot Viking, the beam is 22 foot. So the width of the boat is almost as long as the length of my boat. I’ve decided I’m going to trade mine in for this.