Thought that I would write a quick article about some of my thoughts on my 20098 season. Maybe I could talk about "first things first".

 First Thing:

The economy killed my season on a whole bunch of different levels. It all started when Opec, speculators and/or some evil force conspired to send marina pump prices to the $5.00ish level. It didn't put a serious dent on fishing on my boat because I don't burn enough fuel for it to be too terrible. Once you split the fuel with some buddies then it didn't hurt me too much. OTOH, offshore fishing really took it in the shorts. Sharking and tuna fishing was not a great year given the costs. Although I don't remember the exact costs I think you could expect and overnight canyon trip with friends (on a friends boat) to be about $500/man. That is a good chunk of change.

 Another Thing:

The fall offshore season was a weather mess. We started planning on three overnight trips on set weekends in Aug, Sept and Oct.The Aug trip was a bit of a bust and then every  weekend in Sept and Oct we wound-up blown-out because of weather. By mid-Oct the whole crew freed their calendars and got in one more Canyon trip. We had a beautiful weekend but there wasn't a tuna in all of the northeast. We did score a nice swordie though which was the first that I caught on my buddy's boat.

Last Complaint:

 Freakin' Lehman....right in the middle of what was shaping up to a beautiful Fall fishing season we have the very unfortunate bankruptcy at Lehman. For the following three or four weeks I was only let out of the office for long enough to brush my teeth and comb my hair. By the time things settled down the fish seemed to have already migrated out of the entire NY regio.

 The Upside:

When I was fishing I had a tremendous season. Started off strong with all of the big blues you could ever want in the Gut along with some perfect shark-bait sized blues. Had a flurry of keeper Bass around the Gut, Race, Sluiceway. Missed the biggest bass that I have ever seen swimming when it chased a hooked bluefish right up to the side of the boat near Gardiners. I found some great fluke spots and a few pretty reliable seabass numbers. 

 The only bad part of 2008 is that there just wasn't enough of it! Looking forward to a 2009 that is a good as 2008 but with twice the opportunities