Friday found the Bob party on a 6-hour trip looking to mix it up with both Bay action and Striped Bass. We started back in the Peconics for about 90 minutes of consistent Weakfish action with a dozen fish boated including 4 keepers to 4.5#. A quick drift off the Greenlawns produced one Fluke at 21” and then a shift to East Marion gave up another 3 keeper Fluke along with a few other shorts for an hour’s effort. Headed out to the Gut for the middle of the Flood tide and the Bass action was red hot. Strong wind vs. tide conditions forced me to run the boat into a sizeable rip but the action was super for the next 90 minutes, One or two fish on every drift leading up to the last 2 drifts of the day where all 4 guys were hooked up simultaneously. Decked 22 Bass with an easy boat limit as the class of fish was really nice, about 50% slot size. Even though back one over the slot at 39” easily pushing 25#.
Saturday, I had Lauren and her family do a half day bay trip. With one set of the anchor a a good flow of chum the Porgies started flying over the rails. After 2 hours of non-stop action and putting away about 20 of the largest fish for dinner we moved over to the Weakfish grounds. With a lot of boat traffic and a big swarm of Porgy in the area we only found one small Weakfish among the Scup. Finished up with a few Fluke drifts but only landed a couple of shorts among the Birds and more Scup.
Sunday, on another 6 hour trip, I had the Chris party join me and they we definitely keyed in on the Bass bite. Made a super early start to catch the right stage of the tide at the Gut and once again the Bass did not disappoint. Yesterday’s tally wound up being 18 Bass in the same 90-minute time frame and again nearly half the fish were in the slot size with many of those fish going 31-33”. Dan managed the best Bass of the day with a fish also close to 38” and just under 25#! You know it’s a good day when you are throwing back keepers after reaching the boat limit! The big Blues are also starting to make an appearance and we landed 7 Blues including one scale weighed 15# beast that gave Chris quite the battle.
Back inside the bay we picked a few short Fluke in Orient Harbor then shifted west to the Greenport area. Action was slow with the end of the flood tide but as we powered around a bit and then caught a little drift with the start of the ebb, we sorted through 18 Fluke to put 3 keepers in the box. Mixed in was the mandatory “Heartbreak” big Sea Bass and a really nice 5.5# Weakfish for young, but very experienced, Alex who also landed a couple of the larger Bass earlier in the day.
So, as long as the weather cooperates I am looking forward to many more big charters this month as my calendar is pretty full. July is also filling up with a few openings and August has more open dates. Give me a call if you want to get out.
Capt. Mike
516-317-5423
