Post your 2019-2025 Fluke Pix & Trip Reports Here!

After putting in a few true sweat-equity hours yesterday, diagnosing and repairing an ignition miss (bad wire on #4, as I originally suspected), George, Kevin and I headed out to the deep, for a full session of getting our asses bounced off in the morning (8 and 10oz sinkers required), and then fished thru a gorgeous after-10:30 ocean for a full boat limit to 5lbs. Had to stay on the grounds longer than I cared to, but we got it done, which is the goal, after all.

Days that are fishable are gonna be at a premium over the next week/10 days, so any day we can go, we will.

Thanks for a great effort today Kevin and George, all kidding aside, you guys rock.

Great fishing with these guys. Morning was tough but perseverance paid the dividends! Get those flatties while you can.

Great catch!

Catching a limit of Fluke this season is a real chore. Congrats on the effort and results!

That place is paved with 18-inch fish. You really need to pay attention at what's attracting the keepers. Pete had us on a great drift all day. There was never a time when someone didn't have a fish on. And being they were so close there were many bad calls for the net. More than once we all had a fish on and we weren't sure who should get the net. And some of those throwbacks were fat and probably weighed more than a few of our shorter keepers.

It was such a perfect day. Fishing with theses guys is always a great time. The only downside for me was I had a gulptasrophy. My bucket holding all of my gulp dumped over in the bed of my truck. Time to go buy some recharge.



That is gulp juice.

Would not want to be stuck behind you in a traffic jam. 🙂

Feast to Famine

For the most part this season's offshore fluking has been pretty good. Better than good actually. Limits and near-limits every trip. Until today. Headed out with George and his buddy Westchester Steve for another round of quality fluking on the offshore grounds. But it was not to be.

A little bouncy in the morning with the W breeze working against the incoming tide - which really affected the drift, pushing us down and away from the natural drift and motion we should have had. Pulling the baits past the fluke tail-first is never good, then throw in the (Blue) Moon tide, dirty water and what must have been the after effects of the offshore storm that slammed the South before turning to the offshore Atlantic, and we had the "Perfect Storm" of negative factors.

Nothing but a handful of shorts thru the incoming (my preferred late Summer tide), and so we looked forward to the outgoing aligning with the breeze. During the HWS I got out the Grappler/Ballistic spinning rig and went to work casting about with a 3oz bucktail, carrying a GULP! 6" pink jerk shad and thin strip of squid. On the third cast the lure stopped dead - and I thought damn, yet another snag.

Nope, a VERY athletic 7lb6oz "bath mat" had inhaled the lure and gave an excellent account of itself, diving against the little spinner's drag multiple times. Got it to the boat, Georgie slipped the net under it, and though the hook came unbuttoned in the net, that was that. Things were looking up!

Yeah, not so much. Despite us fishing our butts off, that was it, ONE keeper in the box for the day. Geesh, have we been spoiled by all the recent off-the-hook trips, or what?

An alternate view is that after commenting earlier on that we had not yet seen a fish over 5.5lbs, the past five trips have given up three fish of 7+lbs. So, at least there's a positive to relish.

Anyway, I think we'll let the ocean calm down a bit before heading out again. How long we wait depends on how long the Captain can stand staring at his boat tied in its slip.

That is a beautiful fish !!

That is one serious Fluke on a spinning rod! Nicely done!!

Did you have much short action today or was it very lean altogether?

Maybe a dozen shorts for the day in total. Really a tough trip, other than the above fish. Had to happen sooner or later.

Nice Fish!!
I guess its all perspective
If I came back to the dock with that one and only fish I’d be pumping my fist in excitement of a successful trip ?
Days like that make the great trips all the greater and I’m sure we’ll see pics of one of those trips for you again soon?

That fish was fighting weird so we werent sure what he had. Glad all went well and we landed it! It's strange how you could have an off day, loose what seemed like 10 pounds of tackle, yet that one fish carries the day!

Pre-Hurricane Fluking
It seems that the fluke know it's coming and they've already gathered in their off-shore staging areas. I had 2 buddies on this NJ trip from yesterday, the Captain's write-up is below. I'm still catching them inshore but hope to get out to the deep this week, favorable conditions are forecast pre-Idalia ::

Sun 9/3 Another TRIPLE 12 Man Boat Limit +++ (orl) to 6lbs / Loads of C&R - Well as unbelievable as its been this one tops em all.... Incredible bite... Counting in hundreds again today with Dave D and crew. The Stats 10 anglers 130 keepers even ( a 43 man limit worth )(orl) and hundreds n hundreds of shorts. Highest total of the year... AGAIN!!! Prob the most bites and fluke we ever seen in a day... bc it about the most bites amd fluke u could possibly get in a day...Lock n load drop n reel fishing. Silly!!! Loads of nice keepers and insane amount of shorts. Bit like seabass...some spots we sat on for aslong as n hr getting bite within 10 sec of hitting the bottom for the whole time. Just unbelievable life... really was sick...I literally caught one with a bare 9/0 owner hook as a joke no bait no gulp didn't even need a wawa plastic bag strip ? just a hook( I have witnesses) Finished with 130 k total more than a triple boat limit n more than a quad limit avg pp... kept a boat limit n released a crazy amount of nice fish...bunch of guys between 15-20k and again today a bunch of guys with the best day of fishing they have ever seen. All the gulp is gone folks!!! Oh n Cant forget the bonus trigger n a nice show from a tiger shark ? this was special to b a part off... cant expect it to b like this again but I could hope! Tomorrow! Thanks guys!!​

Tough Day Offshore Fluking

Long story short, despite word from trusted sources that the fishing last weekend rebounded on Sunday (from a dismal Saturday), you'd not know it from our results today. Even thought we employed our best Captain/Crew efforts, George S., Westchester Steve and I were only able to scrape together three decent keepers for a full day's effort. My 5-lber was the biggie, but trust me the fishing was s-l-o-w. I dunno if its over, honestly the water temp hasn't changed all that much and there's still bait o'plenty on the machine, but the fishing has really tailed off.

Though the conditions looked good superficially, again we had zero drift early, then slight breeze against slight tide holding us in place, then later on when the breeze did finally align with the tide the bites were still few and far between. Uggh.

The Sun was particularly brutal today - maybe the worst its been all season, but it was no match for the black fly infestation that enveloped us. They would bite right thru the Deep Woods OFF! that we liberally applied to our legs and feet. However, I did have a "secret weapon" that Mark/Bassman909 talked me into buying at least five years ago - Capt. Ron's All Natural Bug Spray. I had never even thought about using it - in fact I sort of laughed it of. That is, until today. Holy Moses, not only did it work far better than the DEET-heavy OFF!, but it smelled darn nice as well! I highly recommend having it aboard - for those really rough days offshore.

Oh, and some decent fly swatters as well. Though my fish count was poor, I must have ended at least 75 of the little vampire bastids. No more birthdays for them!

Nothing like heading out on a morning like this!


Pete is right, that Capt Ron's stuff works. I had more bites from flies than fish until Pete broke out the Rons.

I'd like to add to Petes report that there were a few boats around us picking away at Albies and a bunch of dolphins around us for a while. I'm only in my third year of fishing these grounds, so I could never be sure if they left. And Pete is not sold that they are. But it seems to me, that they might be gone. My thought is that the Supermoon combined with the hurricane that came up the coast put them in gear. Although I hope not, and I'll be on the next trip to see if they're still around.

Dispite everything, the flies, the heat, the 10 pounds of tackle we lost, I still had a great day. Not to mention there's nothing like a fresh fluke dinner! Thanks for another adventurous day Mr. Lep!

Finally made it to out the NJ/NY Deep for some Sept fluking. I was hoping to go on my buddy's Parker but he blew his Flywheel and he's now out-of-the-water. I hopped on a popular Atlantic Highland headboat and we fished Mud Buoy, 90' deep in most places. There were several NY and NJ headboats out there in the heat with those annoying black flies. Action was steady but seems like everyone caught more out-of-season seabass than fluke; seabass season in NJ is closed during September 😡 , NY boats must've enjoyed keeping the ones we had to toss. Even though I was one of the few to get my limit up to 26", I was disappointed that this known staging area wasn't stacked 🤔. Maybe that bodes well for inshore action until the NJ fluke season ends in 2 weeks. Hope the conditions cooperate until then . . .

Acting on some excellent intel, Capt. Mike and Kevin joined me to give the deep fluke another shot. Word was that big schools of squid had moved into the area we fish and that certainly proved correct. In fact my buddy put a 9.2 in his boat Saturday, along with a bunch of other quality, so we went straight to the numbers he was kind enough to provide. Got there early to a very slow drift and had fish immediately, as long as we stayed tight to the squid. Put three in the box, with a keeper ratio of approx. 13:1 during the mid/late outgoing, and we looked forward to really whaling them when the tide turned. But it was not to be.

As the storm system approached with some truly impressive cloud action and the Wx report got increasingly worse, we looked around and saw we were the last boat out there. Because there were repeated warnings to watch for lightning strikes, and being we were the highest point for many miles, I made the call, time to go. Had we taken a strike that fried my electronics and/or ignition system, there was no one to come to our aid. I really doubt the 6-gauge-wired "earth ground" system I put in the boat would be capable of handling THAT kind of electrical surge. Very dubious, indeed. Not to mention, having nearly 100 gallons of high-test gas in the tanks, was another consideration that came to mind.

Watching the storm cells forming on radar and advance directly over us, the winds swung S to NW at a solid 20-25mph with bands of very heavy rain, and some truly rotten 4' confused wave action. So we steamed back to JI at a stately 13mph thru the nasty stuff - arriving safely just as the all-clear was given. I would have considered shooting back out to the HR had the weather improved just a bit more, but enough is enough, the 2023 fluke season is now over for us.

I would have preferred staying out there today, as the fish were certainly snapping, but yeah, um, no - as Kevin said at the time, "Safety first." Anyway, on to the East End monster biscuit fishing with Capt. Mike next weekend. Looking forward to it, actually.

Late report from Saturday 9-9-23

Spent the day bouncing around the ocean hitting some old and new soft bottom locations looking for those fish that had moved off the hard stuff from the week and a half of swells. Found the kindergarten grounds to the east in 64' of water. Constantly had 2-3 fish on all 12-14".....nothing bigger. Checked another location in 72' of water for just a couple of robins and no bait in the area. Tried some gravel bottom south of my favorite off shore location with plenty of bait and a steady bite of fish to almost 27" boxing 5 for the day. We'll see what happens with this next set of swells and how long they last.

Late report from Saturday 9-9-23

Spent the day bouncing around the ocean hitting some old and new soft bottom locations looking for those fish that had moved off the hard stuff from the week and a half of swells. Found the kindergarten grounds to the east in 64' of water. Constantly had 2-3 fish on all 12-14".....nothing bigger. Checked another location in 72' of water for just a couple of robins and no bait in the area. Tried some gravel bottom south of my favorite off shore location with plenty of bait and a steady bite of fish to almost 27" boxing 5 for the day. We'll see what happens with this next set of swells and how long they last.

Nice job Bucktail