Brenda and Bruce had come from Pennsylvania for a four night five day Montauk vacation from September 17th to the 21st. On September 20th they fished with Captain Steve on his 36 foot Osmond Beel. The trip started with some bottom fishing. It was porgy and black sea bass madness from the first drift to the last. We couldn’t keep the bottom dwellers away from the cut clam baits. After an hour or so we moved on to some live bait fishing. While drifting the live baits Brenda and Bruce continued catching black sea bass. All of a sudden one of the live bait rods bent over and started spilling line. I lifted it out of the rod holder and gave it to Bruce. He wanted Brenda to reel it in. As the transfer was being done the fish went away. We reeled in the rig and saw the live bait circle hook had been bitten off, a telltale sign of the toothy bluefish.
We decided to finish the trip with some wire line trolling. I tied a parachute jig to the monofilament leader and added a red pork rind to the jigs’ hook. Within a few minutes we had a fish slam the jig. This time the fish stayed on after transferring the rod to Brenda. All of a sudden it surfaced and jumped. Another telltale sign of bluefish. After boating, bleeding and icing down the bluefish it was time to head home. The last Wednesday of Summer was a gorgeous day of fishing for Brenda and Bruce. In three days it would be autumn.
