Luyen’s Reel-Time FLog

Took Kameron Rabenou out with Ralph on a beautiful November day. Air temps barely mustered 40, but low winds and bright sunshine made it feel like a much warmer day. We left the marina with an outgoing tide at our backs, and found birds working bait from the marina all the way to Coney Island. Unfortunately, the bait was extremely skittish; Kameron hooked a small bass, but after forty-five minutes of run-and-gun, we had little to show for our efforts. Ralph had been talking about finding schoolies stacked up under structure around Manhattan, so we headed west and up into the Harbor. Ralph’s "structure" turned out to be some barges moored south of the Statue of Liberty. Sure enough, the fish were stacked up beneath these platforms. A good drift with a sinking line under any one of them yielded a fish. Some were as small as 12" — the largest 18". After catching a bunch of these pups, we worked the water around a second barge. Unlike the fish at the first, these fish were pushing bait around the barge, and a small group of gulls worked the swirls left by the bass as they chased their gigantic prey to the surface. We caught fish up to 24" around this barge for the next few hours.

As the tide turned, the fishing continued to improve. Ralph scanned the horizon with his binoculars. Suddenly, he motioned for us to wind up, and as soon as we complied, gunned the engine and pointed the boat towards Newark. We slowed to a putter as we neared an old Army Corps of Engineers dock. The water was barely moving. We saw some isolated gulls flitting about the surface. Were they on bait? Beer bottles? Bubblegum wrappers? Within a few moments, some big bogies began to light up the fish finder. I quickly boated two big fish. Ralph landed a 30" fish on a bucktail. We began to see some big boils under the scattered birds. We decided to live line a big bunker in the hopes of teasing up a lunker. Ralph gave Kameron the spinning rod, and after a half-hour of waiting patiently, the big bait started doing backflips. We watched it run to the surface in panic as a big bass turned to eat him. The bass tried twice to pick up the bait without success, and then suddenly, Kameron’s rod bent over double. He reeled in and immediately felt the heft of the fish as it made a solid run towards deeper water. After a solid fight, he landed the fish: 25 lbs. on the BogaGrip, and over 40". Notice the tag in the striper’s belly.