# Ocean City NJ report



## Manayunk Jake (Oct 3, 2001)

Sailed on the North Star out of Ocean City NJ on Friday, October 31st. Seems like everybody heard the great weather report and decided to take Friday off. The boat was packed shoulder-to-shoulder.

First stop was a wreck pretty close to shore, which seemed to be pretty picked over as far as sea bass went -- lots of fish just under the 12 inch minimum with very few keepers. There were a few nice porgies thrown in with a cople over the ten inch minimum. A couple of nice tog caught (but not by us), including a six pounder. Second stop was more of the same, without the tog.

Capt headed for deeper water and the third stop yielded good (but not great) fishing with a lot more keepers up to 16 inches. A few blues showed up, but not enough to make me quit bottom fishing. Thought the captain was repositioning after a half hour but instead he headed for another spot in shallower water which held mostly sublegal fish. I switched over to a 7/0 chum hook with a sliding 4 oz egg sinker and cut chunks of mackeral, but no bluefish came calling (although I did get my biggest sea bass of the day on this rig.)

The final stop seemed to be the traditional inshore tog spot but the little sea bass gobbled up the crab bait as fast as we could lower it. Ed did get a throwback blackfish and a couple more keeper tog were caught on the boat.

The capt said on the way out that there would be lots of action, but that you would have to work to get a limit. That pretty much summed up the day. Don't know wht he didn't reposition on that deeper wreck -- we could only guess that he was afraid we'd fish it out. None of the blues caught beat that six pound tog (although we saw one big blue hooked at the deepwater spot -- guess he wasn't in the pool...)

Not a great day, but a good day with good company. Looks like Ed and I will have to schedule another freezer filler trip later this month....


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