We fished our last day of the season on Friday 11/29/13 with Larry Thiel, Steve, James Faglio, James Hofbauer, Joe Catizzi, John Cherry and Chaz Lafferty. We had a good run going and were not sure what to expect after the strong winds on Wednesday and Thursday. The conditions were great just a little swell. We arrived at our spot found some bird play put the lines in and started trolling. We worked our way up the beach did not mark much bait we did mark a few smaller fish. We went all the way to Ortley beach worked depths between 35 to 55 feet without a touch. Things were not looking good not much being caught and there were plenty of boats out. There were a few shorts caught throughout the fleet and did hear of a few keepers, still no bites for us. We decided to pull in the trolling gear and drift some spot and jig a few areas to the north this was also uneventful for us. We were working our way down the beach when Kurt “Fritzie “ called and said he had a few bites . We ran to where he was and boated our first striper of the day about 11:30 . We stayed drifting this area and picked up 2 more keepers and released 2 shorts. We also hooked a nice fluke which after a very short debate ,we released . There were a few skates and sundials here as well. That was it for our trip thanks to Kurt we finished up with 3 Keepers and 2 shorts.
Due to the fishing activity and NE in the forecast we canceled our weekend trips and started winterizing. It’s been a great season; we had some very memorial trips, traveled just under 4,000 miles this year and burned 4,700 gallons of fuel.
Have a great Holiday Season!

Good talking with you this season Keith, I am going to give it another try or two and then pull her out.Not the fall run I was hoping for but we had a few good trips. The last few years before Sandy with the insane jig bite has spoiled many of us, maybe the next week or two will turn things around if not we will have to wait for the spring run...Rick

Good luck Rick,hope you did get out today.