Glory Days Let's Hear Em

[Gerry Zagorski]

I'll start here....

Weakfish in the Raritan Reach as fast as you could get your rubber worm tipped with a Sandworm back in the water....

Tuna fishing in the Canyons, bloody decks when they come in spurts and you can't keep up, wearing out your arms and the boat is littered with carnage and coming home full with the entire hold filled.

Spring and Fall Stripers up on top and blowing up on plugs and down on the bottom with bait and jigs...

Founder fishing that was so good all you had to do was fish for a few hours....

Maybe I'm living in the past but let's hear some stories of the Glory days past and present....

[John D.]

Had a 12’ semi v Hull cartopper with 4hp and sonar that would launch from keansburg beach to the reach (yes I know dumb) in mid 90s and destroy the weaks avg size of 2-4lb with big ones pushing 7lbs

Fishing off the old keansburg pier in the early 80s and catching limitless fluke with avg of 1.5-3#.

Winter flounder I did in the other flounder thread at marine park and rum runner in the mid 80s

[Gumada]

After a cold night whiting would wash up on the beach along Asbury. People would pick them up off the beach “frost fish”.

No stripers in the late 70’s , 80’s. A 7 lb fish would win the contest at Fred’s B+T.

The flounder were a nuisance when you were striper fishing with worms, they would suck down a 3/0 hook.

Weakfish were everywhere in Barnegat bay, chumming with grass shrimp.

Fishing for whiting right next to he foreign factory ships.

[SaltLife1980]

Night BlueFish trips outta LBI! So crazy that you couldnt lift your arms the next day bc you caught so many!! Dad and I would have to throw our cloths in the trash when we got back to the house. Looked like we were in a war zone

[bulletbob]

The Weakfishing with plastic worm/sandworm in the Reach was good back in the early 90's no doubt... however, 10 years earlier between the channels, you needed NO bait, just a tiger tail. This was sunset into the night fishing. Drop it down, rod in holder, no action needed other than the drifting boat, and you were into massive tide runners one after another,,, Seldom anything less than 6 pounds, with some as big as 12 or 13, and all you could carry.. Sadly a lot of guys carried a hundred home time after time....


Flounder fishing right off Union beach where I lived... Just drop the anchor, bat a few bank mussels around the boat and in minutes an all out blitz of flounder unlike anything one could imagine these days in only 10 foot of water right off the beach a few hundred feet.. BIG, a 12 incher was a baby, and lots of 18 inchers.. Some huge yellowtails mixed in as well.. Never saw school stripers in those days when flounder fishing in those days like we see today.

Fishing a wreck right in Raritan/Sandy Hook bay, somewhere out past Raritan Reach. No one knew about that wreck, I don't think it was all that big, but a guy from his marina gave my friend the loran number one time in around 82 or 83.. We hit it and it was a motherlode of massive tog right in the bay with boats all around us unaware.. Huge blacks one after another till we ran out of greens, and then a few more on whatever legs, shell fragments we could scrape off the floor of the boat... Got a massive Trigger there as well.. I don't think that wreck exists any more, or it might be covered, but it was like nothing I had ever seen the one time I fished it.

Also remember lights out blackfishing in lovely sept/oct weather in shirt sleeves on sunny calm afternoons, and if you had a decent arm you could skip a rock to the shoreline from where we were fishing in pretty shallow water, 30 feet or less off the Red Church in Llberon... No limits, either bag or size, Plenty of room for all, and the fish were always there spring and fall.. No freezing your ass off in ""backfish weather"".. blackfish weather in those days was a gorgeous sunny early October day, in the mid 60's..Then one day, someone found out that blackfish were good to eat raw with soy sauce and maybe some thinly sliced daikon, and we are where we are today..

Fluke fishing where it was just non stop all day, until your arms hurt and you just had enough and wanted to leave, and all you need was a cheap ass box of squid.. want a doormat?.. Leave the rig as is, except for a massive hook, and put a whole squid on... When the fluke started to get annoying, move to where the boats we clustered and mohawking blues.. usually not monsters, but decent fish 2-5 pounds, and they showed somewhere almost every time we went for fluke, sometimes you would see the birds on the horizon, other times, they were destroying your squid strips, and cutting your hooks and you simply tied on an AVA right where you were fluking, beat them up for a while, and then when they moved off, went back to fluke which were always ready to hit after the blues were gone...


Whiting and Ling that were ALWAYS there in massive numbers, all winter every winter year after year, until one sad day, they weren't. Started in november usually, and typically lasted until the water went below 39 degrees.. That number was given to me by a wise old head boat captain, and many years ago, I kept an eye on coastal temps and he was pretty close.. Mild years the fishing lasted all winter,, Some years it slowed in late January, but was gangbusters again by april.. A partyboat might go down for a month back then, but never for 4 months unless thats what the captain wanted...

i recall when the Atlantic Highland boats all ran all winter, as there were plenty of winter fish to catch, and then in march they started fishing the river for flounder... The ONLY thing that stopped them was when the bay froze to the point where they simply could not get out... I DO recall ice on the bay one weekend, but one of the boats broke it for the others on the way out.. Might have been the Super Cat or the old Sea Fox, can't really recall the boat but I do remember it happening...

I remember fishing the shrewsbury river and if nothing else was around, the eels would bite all day every day, until you got really sick of looking at them and handling them.. they were there by the millions and millions. It was like a plague.. until one day they weren't... I wish i could go back... Or at very least i wish the fish would come back... bob

[Gerry Zagorski]

Ahhh.... Great stories here, love reading them so please keep them coming...

[EddieG]

Have a few but for this time of year I would have to say winter flounder fishing in shark river. 15 yrs ago I remember renting a boat and pulling 30-40 fish easy even bringing up two at a time sometimes on the chum pot... now I live 2 minutes from shark river and take my dog for a run every day there and don’t see anybody catching anything not even one.

[Gerry Zagorski]

Ok so one day burnt in my memory for ever...

Me and Russ, 2 sales people who usually have flexible schedules.. He is free this particular day but I have an I have an important confernce call I cant miss but I wanna fish too so I tell him” I’m in” and will take the call on the boat....

We’re out by Keyport early morning on a blue bird spring day and so far nothing happening....

I go down in the cabin, close the hatch to drown out the sounds of the seas and start my call... A few minutes later Russ is hooking up fish after fish, opens the cabin door and hands me a pole with a Striper on.. Russ laughing his ass off and people on the call asking “what’s so funny and what’s that noise” ?

Sad to say Russ passed away suddenly a few years afterwards but I still can remember him and this day like yesterday..

Sandworms were the ticket that day as were me and Russ.....

[porgylber]

As a 10 year old kid, going out on a party boat with my best friend and his Dad. We went fishing in the spring for mackerel. He taught me how to jig for them. I remember how proud I was to catch my first fish and bring home my 8 mackerel to my Mom.
She then taught me how to clean them and cook them.
As the years went by, I would go out with them for blues, sea bass, flounder, fluke and blackfish. And of course porgies! We would travel out to Greenport on Long Island, because the big humpbacks were there! We would come home with burlap bags stuffed with those porgies, then give away plenty to neighbors on the street.
Fun times!

[Brewlugger]

Growing up I was fortunate to have my Father take me along. We did it all Flounder Whiting , Ling , Mackeral and alot of Blues. We had alot of good trips and some not so good but always good times. We would trailer the boat from Mahwah to Delaware bay in May for tiderunner Weakfish I always looked forward to those trips .When I got older I started tuna fishing, I believe in 1988 there was a great run of Tuna in the Mudhole from late June into October. Big Yellowfin at Little Italy and alot of boats there day and night. Anyone here recall that great fishing? My glory days were any time I spent fishing with my Dad.