First salt trip of season hit Montauk for the full moon over July 4th weekend.
Bass fishing eeling at night was a bit off from the usual July moon trips but a few good fish caught and unfortunately a few big ones broke off that rough estimates were definitely mid-upper 40# class fish. We boated a few keepers and took an unplanned charter to help a fellow charter captain after motor problems heading to grounds with clients. After late start boated a nice keeper, then hooked up with a monster but client was a bit too excited and ended breaking it off. Next hookup was a nice 45" 38# bass that the guy lost his mind over. I'll try to post video. Made best of bad situation and helped out the captain and saved a potential wasted trip for his clients, they went home very happy!
There is a ton of big fish still being caught in mid LI Sound so there's alot of fish not completed their migration to Montauk summer grounds. I guess this season like spring River run is still a bit behind schedule but mid July new Moon should be on fire with big schools setting up residence.
Bottom fishing also was a bit slow for keeper size fluke and seabass but its only going to get better! Honestly we spent very little time Bass and Fluking and majority catching bait for sharking offshore 3 days.
Offshore: Day 1 was slow on the slick but hooked up on one decent shark that was heavy and took a few lengthy runs. We got a look at a large tail fin 150yards out as it came up top after one of the runs, after 15-20 min fight the hook unfortunately pulled. With the surface sighting of at least 2.5-3' of tail fin out of water and still no dorsal fin above waterline we are confident it was a decent threasher. This was one of our #1 goals for the trip but wasn't meant to be😡.
Day 2 offshore was uneventful, we had a boat scoot into the area within a couple miles of us after we had set up so we just hoped for the best something would come up our slick. About half way thru day that boat had made some ground on us as they drifted faster and boat looked familiar but was just out of sight to confirm thru bouncy binoculars. Upon picking up and leaving we had to pass by so took closer look and ended up being our local buddy and charter captain Pete Longo also docked at marina with us. We had no idea where each other was heading that morning and at 25-30 miles out end up within same area only 2 boats out there was crazy. Apparently he got all the sharks in slick and boated 7 blue sharks that never made their way to me, Oh well...
Day 3 offshore epic..... after running a power slick for 2 miles we started setting out and hooked up within 20 minutes an 8' blue shark. From that point on it was pretty much non stop for 5 hours with never more that 10-15 min between releasing one shark to hooking another! We had 2 doubles during the day boating total of 13 not including pop off and breaks of 3-4 others during the day. 12 were blue sharks ranging from 7-10' a couple were nasty and we got slapped hard leaderring to release, one missing Bill my mate head by an inch feeling the breeze go by before hitting the gunnel.... One smaller blue while releasing was being hit by a larger 8' and chewing chum bag with 2 others circling was crazy, thought they were going to bite us and eat it while I was holding by pectoral fin trying to get hook out and had to drop it twice. The sharks kept circling for awhile and Bill got some underwater footage from goPro actually running camera along side the 9'er touching it. Very cool can't wait to pull the video I'll post it at some point.
Highlight was hooking into a mako and giving us a launch out of water but we missed videoing because we didn't know to that point what it was. Boated the mako which was a 60" female that we released. Very cool day but exhausting! It got so bad we wouldn't be able to get baits back out before hooking up or just moan in exhaustion with each hookup...lol. We got to point we just fought them out of the rid holders because we were too tired for standing gear at that point lol .
Bucket list of catching a mako done, need a keeper mako and a threasher next!
