Oct 23 2009

With the colder weather the bass bite has really turned on with fish being caught from the boats and beaches.The West Bar has good action with boaters anchoring up and drifting clam bellies or setting bunker chunks on fishfinder rigs and dropping over a chum pot with ground clam.On night tides drifting live eels through the inlet has been producing stripers up to 39 lbs and gorilla sized blues.There has also been alot of bird activity east and west along the beaches in about 25 - 40 ft of water with good action on light tackle blues casting tins or poppers and if your marking good sized pods of bait try dropping a  2 oz  diamond jig to the bottom and jig it deep this is a good way to jig up big bass during daylight hours.Slow deep trolling bunker spoons and umbrella rigs in this 40ft range should start producing big bass and blues with the hot action between Jones and Debs.Occasionally there has been a scattered pod of bunker flipping through and this will be the way to liveline your biggest bass of the season if your lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.Chunking fresh bunker at Demo and Gilgo has been getting bass up to 26 lbs at night.The day bite has been good at West End 2 with just before first light and into the morning with tins being the best bet like Charlie Graves lures with a small strip of pork or diamond jigs with green tubes having the edge most of the fish are in the schoolie range up to 14 lbs with tales of bigger fish screaming line and surprising a lucky angler..Night plugging along the beaches has been good on SuperStrike Darters & Needles and big metal lip surface plugs like JnSki SS swimmers, I had a nice fish this week at 31.6 lbs on a SuperStrike Darter very early in the am.The bridges also have been holding lots of bait and bass with the bigger ones taken on live eels at night or bucktail / pork rind combos and clam bellies at dawn.Some nice sized blackfish up to 6lbs have also been taken on the bridges and inshore peices on fiddlers.The AB and Long Beach bridges have been hot with bass reported up to 25 lbs and jumbo blues with some sharpies slow trolling the deeper channel edges with parachute jigs and big Danny plugs connecting with large fish ,this is all taking place after dark on quiet nights..I was out for a quickie am trip to the AB reef for some blackfish and had constant action with a nice keeper for blackfish chowder and saw lots of nice fish being taken up to about 6 lbs.This was all on green crab baits.There are also some big seabass inshore and these are jumping on fresh clams and squid fished on 2 hook rigs.On the freshwater scene McDonald pond has been stocked with trout for the fall and anglers have been catching their 3 fish limits up to 16 inches on Berkley trout baits,live trout worms and  small spoons and spinners like Mepps and Little Cleos with gold and copper colors producing best.Craig Felson fished with a Mepps spinner and caught 9 trout up to 16 inches keeping 3 for the dinner table.

"HARDCORE"

"Work All Day...Fish All Night"

Big Rob