I am really convinced that sometime soon there will be an awesome early morning bite. Oh yeah, from the beach. I know the boats are catching them up mostly snagging and dropping bunker, but I'm thinking soon a nice pod of stripers will be in the shallows grazing for breakfast. Today wasn't that day.
I started out at 5 am and was soon joined by my buddy Rich who was throwing metal. It's good to fish with a spin guy, it helps rule fish in or out. I threw some Clousers and Deceivers without a bump, and we covered the area pretty good. I decided to call it quits and took a drive south down to Sea Girt
where I heard there was a good first light bluefish bite. I hadn't fished there since the fall and was surprised to be able to walk out so far as the huge pocket that was there had shoaled in. In the distance I saw bunker bait boats working away from the crowd of boats that was forming off the beach.
I made a move down to the Manasquan Inlet and found a mixed bag of anglers fished off the jetty. Most were on their game, some were really off. I watched a guy hook a huge fish on a Bomber only to lose it as his line was cut by the sharpened side of a huge Cor-Loc dolos that was in front of him. There was pods of bunker to the north and the wind was from the east, some eventually the bunker came south and then traveled into the wind and incoming tide. That path brought them in between two obstacles- the north jetty and a pod of dolphins that balled them up and then worked on edges of the large pod. Luckily the guys with treble snagging hooks made casts away from where the dolphins were coming up. I saw a few small cocktail blues caught, a bunch of bunker snagged, and a large sea robin that grabbed a guys Ava. A few guys live lined some bunker around the concrete dolosse without a take while I was there.
