We covered a lot of ocean on yesterday’s trip and the one thing that impressed me the most was the amount of bunker we spotted all inside the 3 mile line. Unfortunately where we fished most of the day approximately 15-20 miles north of Cape May there was not a lot of stripers caught even though the bait was thick almost everywhere we trolled. I was talking to another long time captain and we kidding about that it might be time to put some tuna gear on our boats with the amount of bait we saw yesterday morning. There was some really good bird action not too far offshore of the 3 mile line early am yesterday and hoping we see some of this in the near future so we can try jigging and throwing poppers which I personally consider much more fun than trolling. There was a good afternoon bite south of us which I heard some boats did really well and helped make a successful day after a slow troll bite earlier during the day especially up to the north. Unfortunately we were a little late for the party as we were fishing a lump a few miles north of where the bite went off but we did get one nice fat 39 incher at this location. The ironic thing is we fished this same location on both of our last two trips and never got a bite or saw anything that would indicate stripers were present but yesterday was different story and good to see some boats did well. Overall there are still plenty of stripers off South Jersey and from my viewpoint you just need to put in your time and be in the right location when the bite goes off. I believe we should still have a few more weeks of good striper action left in the 2014 fall season and possibly even some great striper action in the coming weeks.
Last fall we did extremely well in early to mid-December and with the amount of bait we saw yesterday it could be a repeat of last year in the coming weeks.
