Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Small Blues, Scup Invade Bay

I knew I was in for bluefish as I waded into the waters around mid Bay yesterday evening. Right in front of me an osprey dove down and came up with a foot long bluefish. That was to be the introduction to a night of pesty blues followed by more surprises.
Oh, the blues were around. I would say a skinny plastic offering might last three casts before it was cut in half. So, I put the expensive plastics away and fished with more durable small bucktail jigs. They would not take a popper. I did land about a dozen small bluefish on the bucktail jig that measured from a foot long to about 20 inches.
However, the surprise of the night was the number of scup that I landed. The place was also infested with good sized scup that continued to hit after dark. By sunset, I had no hair left on the bucktail jig and I just went with a plastic grub tail. The blues and scup would rip the tail apart until I had a little white chunk of plastic left on the hook. Guess what, the scup were whacking that. I landed about 20 scup, all legal, up to 14 inches. It was the first time I have ever run into big numbers of these way up in the Bay. After you think you've seen it all, another surprise often comes your way. Tonight it was the scup.