Friends in the Coastal Fisherman

After a 35 minute fight, less than a half hour into their trip, Todd, Mark, their Dad, and Jacquie's Dad landed this giant Bluefin Tuna. At the scales it weighed in at a whopping 156 pounds and stood 5 foot 3 inches tall. It was caught by the Ham Bone 70 feet below the surface. Look for their picture in the upcoming Coastal Fisherman.

I WANNA ROCK!

On June 13th we headed out on the bay charter the Lucky Lady with Captain Don hoping to catch some big Rockfish. Gary and I (Matt) pulled in two nice one's a 22 incher with mine barely beating the 18 inch minimum. It was a beautiful day but unfortunately the bite wasn't really happening so we headed just outside the key bridge by Bethlehem Steel for a little more action and action we sure had. We put our rods in and the white perch were hitting the lines faster than the first mate could take them off the hooks. Seth, Gary, Greg, Anthony, Glenn and I all caught at least a dozen a piece and each left with enough fish for quite a fish fry.

Who's having the Best (Fishing) Week ever?

We did on the Happy Ours for the first week in July. 33 Flounder were caught but it was the one that got away that might have made the paper. Todd, Tony, Brice, Gary and I (Matt) all were on the boat on July 9th when we caught 14 flounder and a blue. Todd was knocking them dead on live minnows and the occasional Gulp bait. He ended up catching almost half of the boat's total. It was on my line that I felt stuck to the bottom until I felt my line flutter. This was a big fish. It took a few minutes to reel it in and once it got to the surface we new she was a keeper. Todd grabbed the net and tried his best to nab it but just like that the line snapped and under the boat she went. I almost threw my rod to the sea in anger as I pictured my mug disappearing from the pages of the Coastal Fisherman much like the photo in Back to the Future. It looks like it's time for bigger rods, higher test and a bigger net. All and all it was a great week but no keepers...maybe we'll save that for the Flounder Pounder in September.

Happy Ours is Christened...

and the fish came a swimming. Not long after we slapped the name across the sides of the boat we took her out for some flounder fishing and had one of our best days ever. 7 flatties in 2 hours a 17, two 16's, a 15, two 14's and two 12's. Was it the boat name or the new Glup chartreuse bait that seemed to attract everything in sight including these two starfish?