Fall weather has officially arrived for the captains of the Beach Haven Charter fishing Association. Cool nights have dropped the bay water temperatures some seven degrees and a few degrees also in the ocean. As long as the vast schools of bait remain inshore, this should hasten the arrival of striped bass and big bluefish from the north.
Boaters are already drifting live eels in the bay looking for bass as well as fishing plugs along the sod banks. While reports have been scarce so far, this should start to pick up very soon.
The negative of the past couple of weeks continues to be the strong winds that make trips into the ocean difficult to say the least. As a matter of fact, there was even a tornado warning for the Long Beach Island area last night.
Once the winds drop, the trips to the offshore canyons for tuna will resume. When calm days are found, the fish will be there. The inshore wreck and reef trips will be popular as of October 18 when the black sea bass season reopens until the end of the year. With a 15-fish per day limit and many large fish around, this fishing should be good. Blackfish are still only one per day until November 16 when the daily limit increases to 6.
Captain Tim Knorr of the boat "William Knorr" just shared a bottom fishing report from a few weeks ago. Fishing at a wreck close to the Barnegat Reef, his group caught 5 jumbo keeper fluke with the smallest at 24-inches using large brown Gulp baits. At one point they caught a double header of juvenile mahi-mahi and another double header with a mahi and a bluefish. They fished the entire day on just one wreck. The anglers consisted of Captain Tim, his son Steve, and Eric Zak.
Additional information on the Beach haven Charter fishing Association can be found atwww.BHCFA.org.
