No work = fish beat down

[Chrisper4694]

didn't have off monday, but had off today! turned out to be a much better day anyway! near perfect conditions. seasonably cool with plenty of cloud cover till noon and just a very slight breeze most of the time. whacked up plenty of fish until the sun took over the sky around noon. shot a few stupid cormorants with my pretend fishing rod rifle between hookups blaka blaka! didn't almost fall out of the boat, face plant the side of the boat or lose anything this time! 5 stars!

target was smallies but was catching nothing but largies at first, nice ones 16-17", i thought if i didn't take any pictures of them they'd go away and let the smallies come play. I was half right, they went away but instead of a smallie i got the fattest damn pickerel i've ever seen in my life! I've seen 1 longer in person but skinny. this sucker was 26.5" and just a glutenous slob!

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on if you like them or not...this fish had trouble swimming away. as soon as i netted it it didn't look too good so i left it in there for a while and eventually just snapped it's pic and put it back by it's tail and tried reviving it like a musky slightly 'twisting' it back and forth slowly. After about a minute it swam away kind of and i couldn't see it anymore so i went on my way. about 5 minutes later i saw birds mauling it to death on the surface...

Went back to trying for smallies and finally got on them pretty good but not really the size i was after, cause i'm greedy and want a 23 incher! a few small ones 14" or so and a couple of nice ones 16-17". broke one of my rules and 'left fish to find fish' thinking i could find bigger ones schooled up. ended up finding one 18.5" very nice fish but that was it. clouds disappeared around noon and that seemed to pretty much kill the bite.

didn't someone recently say there's no fall bite in NJ?...