raritan bay Fishing Report 2024

Excellent, excellent fishing on 70-170 lb tuna until about 1pm. Most all of the fish were released. We looked hard late in the afternoon, but a front came up and the weather got rough. One more day for us, wish us luck.

Wednesday, August 29th, 2012

Hi friends. We made it back up to the tuna grounds at first light and found absolutely beautiful weather and the "football" yellowfin tuna were hungry today. Steady jig strikes all morning all the way up until we found a kelp that accounted for most of our score on this day. It was a really fun kelp too. You could look in the water and see brown for most of the stop and these fish were on the squid real nice and the skip jig as well. Kub Ito even got in on some hand-line action which was pretty entertaining. Speaking of Kub, Kub had ten minutes of hardhat time for two minor offenses. Good job, Kubby bear. Anyhow, fun morning of fishing and flat calm, sunny weather to boot. A fine way to end a fine trip and Joe Beck and the boys are pumped.

Anyhow, we're traveling up the line in a very calm ocean and we're looking to arrive to the docks at 0600 where we will be getting the boat turned around and heading out on our annual Gary Roberts 9-day trip. We'll chat with you tomorrow evening sometime. Take care.

P.S. Absolutely no hardhat time for Mark this trip. Shocking, I know. Granted he was in the galley this trip but nonetheless, he was on the boat. Good job, Mark. You now have nine days to reclaim that beautiful yellow dome of yours. Stay tuned.

With great anticipation of a light load aboard the Apollo, all 14 of us anglers showed up at the dock early, swapping stories about past trips. We started boarding about 9:30pm and were greeted by Capt JJ Gerritsen and the rest of his crew, we signed in and had a seat for our safety briefing. Capt JJ then asked if we wanted to head offshore for Albacore which had dramatically slowed down the last couple days or head south along the coast for a shot at Dorado and Yellowfin and Yellowtail patty hopping. Without much hesitation we decided to head south and patty hop. We got the feathers in at gray light and started the troll, within 15 minutes the yell of "Hook-up" sang out, unfortunately the mystery fish got away and we were under way again. Five minutes later we heard that yell again, the mystery fish won round two and will live another day. Third time's a charm didn't hold true for us, our third hook-up is still out there in the deep blue. At that point the first troll rotation was fired (which included me) and the second shift took over. Within 10 minutes they had our first fish on the deck, a skipjack, from that point on while looking for patties we boated about 19 skipjack. We found our first patty around 10am and moved in with hopes of a wide open bite, but to our dismay there was nobody home. That held true for the next 8 patties we found, then finally around noon with a mouth full of burger, we heard the call to get ready. Never fails every time your food is done, it's time to drop a line. As soon as our sardines hit the water the patty expolded, we ended up with 1 Dorado and 2 Yellowtail. We only found two two more patties holding fish and ended up with 1 more Dorado and 4 yellowtail. It was now time to head back to port and we again set out the troll lines and managed to pick up 7 Yellowfin Tuna on the way back in. I really enjoyed sharing the rail with a great bunch of folks and look forward to doing it again soon. If you would like any of the pictures posted please email me at [email protected] .