First Try

First try

On June 15 my wife and I made our first attempt.  We had heard that there were some fluke to be caught at the Middle Grounds off of Beach Haven.  We headed there and started our drift between Shelter Island and Long Point Island.

Both Patti and I were using 6” bass rods with braided line and 20 lb leader, probably a little much.  I rigged Patti’s rod with a 2 oz. weight and a minnow with a yellow spinner with small silver blades on top of the hook.  I rigged a 2 oz white bucktail with white hair with a new penny Gulp shrimp.

We fished there for about 45 minutes, with no luck, before Patti decided that it was too beautiful a day to sit in a boat and she asked to go back so she could go to the beach.

I dropped her off and returned to the Middle grounds but this time I went where I could see other boats fishing.  This was closer to Beach Haven in the area of the marker buoys.  I set up around marker 9 and 10 and using the same gear from earlier in the day began my drift.

The conditions were sunny with the tide going out, water temperature around 74 degrees and a slight breeze fighting the tide.  My drift was about .5 to .9 knots.

It wasn’t too long before I had my first fish on.  Unfortunately, just before I got it to the boat it got off and I couldn’t see what it was.  This fish bit on the minnow rig.  After that drift I picked up and started again, but there wasn’t much action.  Then I hooked up with a fluke that was just shy of the 18 inch limit so it was returned to grow up some more (or get caught in a drag net off-shore).  Around this time, the reel on the rod with the minnow rig came off the rod (fixed after I got it home) and I moved the minnow rig to a much lighter Zebco closed face spinning combo with 6 lb. test.  By this time the drift had all but disappeared to zero. I put a fresh minnow in the Zebco and put it in the water.  Shortly the rod bent over almost double.  I picked it up and started to reel but the drag was too loose and I was loosing ground not gaining.  I tightened the drag and started to crank but the thing at the other end didn’t want to come in.  After a few minutes I finally got a glimpse of a skate.  I let it go and 5 minutes later I had another one. 

By this time I was down to one minnow so I put it on and fished for a while then Patti called from the beach and said she was coming back so I packed up and went home.

So I missed one, got one fluke and two skates.  Not bad for my first try.  All on minnows.