I headed straight to the pier at 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning and bought a 3 day pass….Avalon Fishing Pier to be exact.  Out on the deck of the pier, only 2 or 3 other guys had beat me to the punch.  The pier filled up quickly though.

I tied on a Gotcha plug and started throwing…and throwing…and throwing…  Finally, I got a 13″ bluefish and I was on the board.  I threw the red and white plug for 2 more hours and pulled in 4 more similar-sized blues…perfect eating size! 

The morning’s catch…

The coolest thing about Wednesday morning was the water…aquarium clear!  We could see 6-8 feet deep and there were plenty of fish to look at.  Stingrays were thick, a cobia swam through, there were a bunch of skates and a few small flounder laying in the sand, a few schools of sea mullet and cigar minnows, and even a big striped bass swam under the pier…and promptly ignored my Gotcha plug that I hurled 4 or 5 times in his direction.  Also, the pier pilings were covered in spadefish and triggerfish. 

An angler lands a nice triggerfish…

Some anglers caught their fair share on shrimp and sand fleas, but you can’t pry a Gotcha plug rigged rod out of my hand when blues or Spanish are in the area…so I did my thing while they did theirs.

I was back eating waffles, bacon, sausage, and eggs at the house by 8 a.m., but I headed back to the pier at 3:45 in the afternoon after a day of beach bumming…

The Spanish were thick and on the hunt…but they were short striking like nothing I’ve ever seen.  I counted 25 or 30 strikes on my plugs before I quit keeping track.  I did manage to land 3 good-sized Spanish mackerel, but oh…what could have been.  A group of guys that I fished with the rest of the week had landed 38 by day’s end…an outstanding catch by any standards!

That was the end of Day 1…more to come…