September
Through the month of September I had to abandon my favorite way of fishing, live lining, due to a lack of spot in our area. While I like to troll a lot, I also like to mix things up through out the year and save my trolling trips for trophy season and late in the fall when the migrants return to their birth place. Because of that the fact that the fish have started schooling up nicely, we have moved to light tackle jigging and casting plugs. It is the easiest way to keep my passengers on action and entertained, especially since most everyone likes watching fish hit top water plugs.
Most trips we were able to squeeze out keeper fish to 23-25" but the keeper to throw back ration hasnt been great. Lots of shorts and dinks. We have had a fair amount of 18-20" that would have been keepers last year. Keepers seemed to come in bunches close together too so if you find a school of larger fish, work hard to stay on them. We did have a couple trips where we only came home with bluefish due not being able to get rockfish over 20". At the very end of the month I got some intel from a neighbor about some bigger fish on the bottom close to home under the smaller and we did get a fish over 30".
Earlier in the month we did a lot of fishing on the Eastern side of the bay but the last half of the month the strong easterly winds had the bait and fish piled up more on the western side of the bay. Despite tons of menhaden in the bay, the fish have been feeding on and spitting up silversides. Because of this we have been fishing mostly chug bugs and small metal jigs like Lil Bunkers, sting silvers, deadly dicks, etc.
Hopefully the storm wont foul up the bay too much and the fish that are in the rivers will start chasing the bait into the bay with a water temp drop. Here are some photos of September. I wish I had more but with my son back in school, he isnt there to take them for me or remind me.
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