Recent Saltwater Catches

[Johnsfolly]

When they started lifting the travel bans and self-quarantine rules, I finally got to head back out for saltwater fishing. We haven't had great success on numbers, but really made up so far is variety. Not going to go into too much detail on gear. Many of these fish were caught on high/Low rigs using live bait or fishbites.

In Ocean City Livie and I fished a couple of piers using bloodworms and minnows.

She caught a bunch of small black sea bass.

And I caught a small summer flounder on a minnow and a 14 inch tautog (blackfish). on bloodworms.

I got out one morning to the beach in Delaware and caught a couple using bloodworms scented fishbites bait.

Caught my first First State "trout" - a weakfish or sea trout (happens to be the state fish ).

And a southern kingfish (aka whiting or kingcroaker).

Last Friday I ended up trying to catch some decent bluefish. Really slow day that even the locals were having a tough day. After about 4 hours of being skunked, I did catch my first fish of the day, a hickory shad, on a Thinfisher blade bait. I had lost a decent fish about 15 mins earlier on a 1 oz bucktail.

Back toward the mouth fo the inlet, there were terns and gulls hitting bait fish. I threw out a 1 oz silver and red jigging spoon. I let it sink about 4 to 5 ft, jerked it once and was on tight to a snapper bluefish.

Next cast same thing except the blue threw the bait 15 ft from being landed. Then nothing for many, many, casts. I switched to a small yellow headed Gotcha plug and landed one more hickory shad then the bite shut off. Although I haven't had any of the those high numbers days, all of these fish were fish that I had not caught yet this year .

[gotmuddy]

Thanks for the report, I cant wait to get into the salt again...next week!

[FishnDave]

Are Bluefish kind of like a saltwater pirhana?  😁

[Johnsfolly]

35 minutes ago, FishnDave said:

Are Bluefish kind of like a saltwater pirhana?  😁

Yes ! They can strip a cow to the bones in less than a minute... OK maybe not, but they will flat out tear up bunker and other fish when they are in a feeding blitz. I made the mistake of getting my finger close to the mouth of a little guy and it bit through my finger nail . After that I never get my fingers anywhere near their mouths.

[FishnDave]

That Tautog is pretty cool!

[Ham]

1 hour ago, FishnDave said:

Are Bluefish kind of like a saltwater pirhana?  😁

Basically, we would be catching Speckled Trout on the Louisiana Coast and then Bluefish would more in and you could not land a fish intact. The Blues would chop them in half. We would have to move. My dad was not a Huge Fan of Bluefish.