We pulled the boat this morning and put 2020 to bed. The good news was there were a lot of stripers around and they gained a couple pounds and added a couple inches. The blues were pretty much non existent and the bonito as well. The albies showed up and then got blown out by a series of storms. Tons of shad were here as well as three different species of mackerel. Made a lot of new friends this season as well as getting to spend some time with old friends and that was pretty good. Stay well over the winter and we hope to see you in the spring.

What do you do on a cloudy day in the fall with no wind, rain or fog? We left the dock before the sun came up and were greeted by hundreds of birds getting their breakfast. We fished for five hours and it was pretty much non stop all morning. Huge schools of bass and shad chasing anchovies. There were blues and mackerel mixed in also. Only a couple of other boats out there. I had a great nap when we got home.

This morning Ryan & Mike came out with their dad Peter in hopes of finding the invisible albies. The winds switched to the east and were blowing pretty steady. Add that to the big heave from the hurricane off Virginia and that took away most of our options on where to fish. We put a lot of miles on the boat with minimal results. We did our best but it wasn’t to be. No skunk but a lot of effort was put forth. We did see massive schools of adult and peanut bunker heading west with nothing pushing them.

Steve and Bob came down Thursday for another adventure on a day when the fog didn’t lift till we got back to the dock. When we got to where we needed to be it was pretty much non stop for about four hours. We had more doubles than singles and I spent then day going from one side of the boat to the other to land fish. The ratio of bass to shad was about even. They were eating everything that we threw at them from crease flies to Clousers. Lots of fun on the boat today.

We left the dock early this morning under perfect conditions. Heavy overcast, fog and flat calm seas. We passed by the places that held bass two days ago without seeing any life except shad and there were lots of shad. Pretty much everywhere you looked you saw shad. We played for a while and caught a bunch of them. The thought was that if that’s all there was today maybe we should catch a few. We kept on and found more schools of shad and we picked away on the fringes of the schools and started getting some bass mixed in. Moving on we eventually had a huge school of fish come up behind us. These were mostly bass up to around ten pounds or so. A big improvement over the shad. We had the school to ourselves for about an hour so that was pretty good. I was catching bass and shad and Gail was too until she pulled a nice sized bonito out of the school. She then finished the slam with a nice bluefish. A pretty fun day with my best friend.

Sunday morning brought Jon and Jeanine back for their second round.We left the dock at a balmy 34 degrees and ventured out. We found the fish where we left them last Wednesday. Jeanine struck first again with a chunky shad and Jon soon followed with a striper. We picked up a few more fish when the wind shifted and came up hard. Another guide said that it felt like they got hit with a boat wake but the waves kept coming. We managed one more bass on the way home. Despite the wind it was a fun day with good people.

Dr. Jeff and Frank came up to spend Sunday morning looking for our friend Albert. We left the dock early and headed out. We found lots of hungry bass and a few bluefish. Dr. Jeff got his trifecta with a bunch of shad and Frank completed his with our first bonito of the year. There were a few pods of albies running around but they didn’t want to stay and play. Still lots of boats out there but they should start to thin out. If the winds stay down it should be a pretty good fall run.