Sea Bass Season Opens Today

The first portion runs through June 19. And from all reports coming in from the party boats fishing for flounder (fluke), ling and winter flounder, well, the bottom and up are swarming with arguably the most delectable inshore gamefish: black sea bass.

“It’s almost impossible to get the baits down to the ling, fluke and flounder! The sea bass are mugging everything,” quipped capt. Willie Egerter III from the Dauntless sailing from Point Pleasant.

This augurs well (weather/conditions permitting, of course) for a drop ‘n reel fishing experience, and from aforementioned communications, there are big numbers of knucklehead biscuits situated over/on the reefs, wrecks and any other bottom structure.

Succinctly, there are mother lodes of sea bass, all sporting a wide maw, that will eagerly inhale offerings of fresh or salted clam, rainbow clam, squid strips, green crab, and live killies (minnows), the Berkley Gulp! Shrimp, Sand Eel and Swimming Mullet, and the Fishbites clam, squid and shrimp baits.

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These on bait rigs, on a bucktail jig or, in shallower confines, a jig head are meal makers.

For those who eschew the use of flesh or its imposter selection of plastics and biodegradables, well, jigging is the way to many meals as well. Jigs such as the tried ‘n true diamond jig AVA 007, 17 and 27, naked or tubed, will put sea bass on ice. A crusher the past few years is the slow pitch jig technique, of which there are numerous metals from many manufacturers.

It (the technique and metals) are as esoteric as one wants to delve. Nomad and Mustad are two of the leaders when it comes to the slow pitch jig offerings. Expensive? Yes. Effective? Yes again.

The daily limit is 10 sea bass at a 12.5 inch minimum.