SHAKE IT OFF!

I am writing this report on the last day of Winter 2014. On Thursday, Spring is officially here. Sometime around midnight, the ospreys will show up, the laughing gulls will sing their first song, and if you hold your ear to the bulkhead, you should be able to hear the blue claws climbing out of the mud. Yes, it is going to be a busy night for them, but for those of us that hunt the elusive spring striper with hook and line, we still have a little waiting to do.

Water temps have just barely cracked 40 on sunny days, but this stealthy reporter has had word from my secret upriver spies that the perch netters are starting to find some large, striped surprises in their haul backs.

Historically, this past big moon has been the starting gun for the very early herring run for dip and cast netters. The mid-March moon had us scurrying up to check our secret little spots and gear up our trucks with live wells and old boat batteries. Our State regs have taken that little joy out of Spring, but make no mistake about it, the next couple weeks are going to see some action. Big bass gorging on bigbait fish in fresh water, sometimes fairly shallow freshwater, will have me up early and on the riverbank. Live-lining an alewife or blueback used to be the plan, but running big, loud, gurgling topwaters is going to be strategy number one. If they will only stop eating real bait long enough to get aggravated by the poppers.

Speaking of Summer Flounder, it looks like we have all the kinks worked out of the system with the exception of the start and end dates of the season. We took a bit of a hosing from the Empire State on quota, which twisted our regulations around a bit. A 5-fish limit was finally approved by ASMFC, which is up one in the bag from what was earlier indicated. The season will run 128 days, but actual start date will not be official until April 3 at the NJMFC meeting. It’s going to be in Manahawkin if you are in the mood to blow a little steam off. They will have to be 18 inches to keep, which guarantees a banner year for 17.5-inch fish, and starting date will either be May 17 or the following Saturday, the 24th. Why can’t they open on Wednesday and give us true fish bums a break?

From the truly good news department, the 10-day outlook has no single digit temperatures forecast and I also don’t see the word “accumulation”, so I guess this will be the last opportunity to go thru the gear and double check it before it gets pressed into service. It is going to be a great weekend to rip the wraps off the boats and and get going on spring cleanup, but no bottom painting yet. If you paint when the hull is still too cold you are going to regret the heck out of it when you have to do it all over again in a month. Happened to a buddy of mine last year and I’ve learned his lesson. They put instructions on those cans other than “brush on” for a reason.

Here are a couple other fun bits just to get your juices flowing.

The Gambler out of Point Pleasant will start running again on April 1, and already has some tile trips on the board.

Capt. Bobby Quinn on The Ocean Explorer out of Belmar has been running for cod and blackfish the last week or so as conditions allow and although the fishing has been a little picky, they are still putting enough in the cooler to make everyone happy.

Down in the Southern end of the state, there have been a couple of reports of throwback stripers on soft plastics, and even a couple claims of keepers, but nobody brought me any pictures yet.

Lots of activity at your favorite tackle shops. Every last one of them is either in gear up or game on mode, shaking off some of their winter hours and proud of all the elbow grease they put in to make their shops ship shape. It is still call before you go time, but at least now you will probably get the phone picked up! I know I have mentioned this to you before, but right about now would be a great time to drop in on your neighborhood shop with a few Dunkins and renew your network for the upcoming season. If you don’t think this pays dividends in intel once things start to get rolling, you are nuts. A guy rolled into TackleDirect last week with a half dozen pizzas for the guys in the phone room and warehouse. You don’t think his cell is going to be ringing with the first hot info that comes across the counter? Really?

Best Bets for the Weekend

If it actually does hit 58 degrees, I’m driving the truck up the river and throwing a big wooden herring-looking topwater for an hour or two just to get it out of my system, then the toolbox and I are headed to the boatyard.

Stay Tuna-ed!