Today I fished with 12-year-old Joey and his father, Tom, from New Jersey. The weather was warm but windy – it was actually really windy once we got going. Joey wanted to catch lots of fish, so fish we did. On his first cast, Joey caught a big porgy. He did again on the second and third, and before we knew it he was catching a big porgy on every cast! These fish will readily eat a small 1/16 ounce jig tipped with squid and fight like crazy on 8 lb test. All our fish were in 10 to 20 ft of water and on or near rocks. We didn’t need to chum to catch them; just let it sink on a ten count and slowly (very slowly) retrieve it and hang on.
Joey wanted to beat his previous catch of a 26″ striper. After getting our fill of porgies we went off to the reefs to find some bigger fish. We went to Plum Island and found birds on sand eels. Joey caught a big bluefish there. As I recall, that fish was a father/son combo catch. Leaving Plum Island, we fought some really windy conditions and ended up behind Fishers Island where we caught some more schoolie stripers. We couldn’t find any bigger fish there so we worked our way around the island to Watch Hill where we got a couple more schoolies. Anyway, fishing was tough today but we ended up with a bunch of really nice porgies for the table a bluefish that matched Joey’s previous striper record size and a bunch of schoolie size stripers.
This season big fish are as plentiful as I’ve ever seen, and yet we weren’t able to get on any big fish today. Tomorrow there are going to be thunderstorm and rain, so no fishing. I’ll have another report for Wednesday.
