Fishing Around: Three Best Bets for Fishing This Month
Lots of back-bay flounder mean lots of smiles like C.J. Walsh’s.
August’s light easterly winds push Bombay Sapphire-like swells from the Gulf Stream to New Jersey’s beaches for a few short weeks, bringing the season’s clearest waters to local beaches. Have you seen the bottlenose dolphin and cownose rays that swarm these clear waters each summer?
You should be able to find the dolphin easily. Immediately outside each local inlet, you’ll find a steep drop-off from 25 to 35 feet. The bottlenose dolphin patrol this edge, looking for menhaden (bunker), kingfish and small weakfish. Move quietly along this contour north or south of the inlet, especially on a falling tide, and you should find one or more pods of dolphin that will entertain your entire crew. Keep your engine in low idle and the dolphin should hang around for a while.
Along the way, you’ll likely also encounter a brown patch in the ocean. That brown patch is a school of cownose rays on the move. Each ray is about 30 inches wide, weighs more than 20 pounds, and has a toxin-laced spine that’s often removed in aquariums so guests can feel them. Unlike dolphin, these rays are on the move and will not hang around the boat, but kids will love seeing them.
In fact, as much as I enjoy taking friends fishing in June and July, I like catching fish in August because this month’s fleeting fishing opportunities vanish with September’s first nor’easter. Here are my three best bets for fishing this month.
In these clear waters, flounder and triggerfish invade local jetties where they feed on small crustaceans. Flounder lurk in the sandy patches between the rocks, especially those at your feet. When light winds coincide with high tide, I’ll use a 3/8-ounce white bucktail with a small white Gulp! swimming mullet. Concentrate on keeping your lure around the rocks as long as possible, letting your jighead wash with the surging waves. You’ll see the puff of sand before the flounder eats your jig. Please release these small flounder into the water instead of into the rocks (or a cooler). Triggerfish are just a few feet farther from the rocks, where they will eat a Gulp! shrimp (“New Penny” color) fished on a 3/8-ounce or half-ounce leadhead around the rocks that fell off the jetty. I’m also eager to fish a Bottom Sweeper Jig, made locally by Capt. Dan Schafer, tipped with fiddler or green crab. I’m thankful that Coach Mike Barnes showed me this jetty fishery more than a decade ago.
Large flounder invade nearshore artificial reefs each August and I can’t wait to catch them. The State of New Jersey has placed hundreds of objects on the Ocean City, Townsends Inlet, and Wildwood artificial reefs, including tugboats, commercial fishing boats, Army tanks, subway cars, concrete road slabs, stacked of tires stuffed with concrete, inmate-built reef balls, and rock dredged from the Delaware River. The state creates free maps of what and where it has placed on each reef that you can download here: www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw.refloc00.htm.
Invest an hour exploring your local reef and you’ll find new piles of rock and tanks that hurricanes have rolled. These “unmarked” spots have more fish because most anglers don’t know they exist. Because flounder lay in the sand next to rocks or a tank, make short drifts (5 minutes, not 15) and tap your GPS’ “mark” or “man overboard” button when you get a bite. The personalized treasure map that I’ve already created resulted in two 4-pound-plus flounder on the same drift last year! To catch these larger flounder in 45-60 feet of water, grab a fast-action spinning rod and reel with 20-to-30-pound braid. Around the reef rubble, I bounce 3-to-4-ounce ball jigs with 6-inch Gulp! grubs (pink slime). Rig a 5/0 Gamakatsu baitholder hook with a white 5-inch Gulp! bait as a teaser 18 inches above the jig. You’ll catch more fish on the teaser but will catch bigger fish on the grub. You can also fish the reefs with high-low rigs tipped with long squid strips and/or Gulp! and 4-to-6-ounce sinkers, but keep your line as vertical as possible to minimize snags, lost rigs and lost time. Bring a big landing net because you’ll never know when your biggest flounder will bite. I look forward to beating my 6½-pound personal best this summer.
As much as I enjoy flounder fishing, I start looking toward distant Gulf Steam waters. If you’ve never seen Gulf Stream waters in our offshore canyons, watch the Open Ocean episode of the BBC’s “Blue Planet” series. Graceful shearwaters soar over cobalt swells, common dolphins (the two-tone ones) swim under the bow of your boat, and massive sea turtles hunt for exotic jellyfish. This is where you’ll find white and blue marlin. Most white marlin are 40 to 60 pounds and anglers regularly encounter 200-to-400-pound blue marlin in our local canyons, but much larger blue ones are hooked each year. #bigfishhappen.
I enjoy the significant preparation of marlin fishing as much as I do the significant anticipation. While blue marlin will certainly eat a plastic lure, most Mid-Atlantic blue and white marlin are caught by trolling natural baits, whether ballyhoo or Spanish mackerel. The best ballyhoo are caught each winter in the Florida Keys, where they are brined, vacuum-sealed and frozen. They are thawed in a bucket of cold saltwater and rigged on circle hooks to reduce post-release marlin mortality. As a lifelong learner, I ordered a few 16-inch Spanish mackerel from my favorite Philadelphia fishmonger to learn how to rig them as pitch baits. I butchered my first two attempts but the rest are deboned and stitched like a pork loin in my freezer, waiting to swim in 79-degree waters with a 16/0 circle hook this month.
No matter where you fish for marlin worldwide, the goal is to attract the fish to the spread behind the boat and to see the bite. At 4½-6 knots (the speed of a brisk walk to a jog), crews pull hookless teasers, typically one dredge (imagine a golf umbrella frame with plastic squids trailing from each arm) and at least one chain of similar plastic squids with a large ballyhoo at the end. You’ll see a marlin’s electric blue pectoral fins when it appears behind your teaser, trying to swat a free meal out of the apparent school. The angler’s job is to present a bait to the marlin that looks like the free meal that the marlin desires. Therefore, anglers pull four small ballyhoo and one or two larger baits, whether a large ballyhoo or Spanish mackerel, as built-in options around these teasers. Ideally, a ballyhoo free-spooled over the dredge will entice a white marlin to chase the easy meal. With a thumb on the spool, the angler waits to feel the line accelerate, indicating the marlin has the bait in its mouth. After a slow count to four, the angler pushes the lever to “strike” and the rod should load as the white marlin goes airborne. Do you now wonder why anglers put so much into marlin fishing? At the dock, you’ll see what a crew caught by the flags flown on the starboard outrigger. The blue marlin flag (white with blue ink) is flown highest, followed by white marlin flags (blue with white ink), and then tuna and/or dolphin flags. “A rigger full of laundry” is symbolic of a great day in the offshore canyons!
Finally, why are they called the dog days of summer? The “dog days” have nothing to do with Fido. The dog is Sirius, the dog star and the brightest star in the sky. In August, Sirius rises in the eastern sky just before dawn. Look for it on your ride to the canyon this month. Sirius is how the Romans spelled the Greek word for “scorching.” The ancient Greeks believed that Sirius’ summertime schedule brought heat, drought, lethargy, severe weather and bad luck. In its most cited use, Homer’s “Iliad” compares Sirius’ summertime wrath to the violence with which Achilles will slay Hector. My fellow Episcopal Academy alumni might recall this passage from a Latin class with Lee T. Pearcy.
While I don’t disagree with the Greeks’ meteorological evaluations, I sense that we’ll all have great piscatorial luck this August. Whether near or offshore, don’t miss the best fishing that summer has to offer. There’s still time to hire a guide or charter boat to help you achieve your fishing goals, like my big flounder and a marlin. When I catch them, I’ll share the photos on my Instagram account @cjwalshiii. Got a great fishing photo? Share with me so we can publish it in upcoming column. I look forward to seeing you on the water.