[Anthony]

I went on the partyboat Olympus with Foodfan, his son and one of his buddies on the Saturday night trip and ended up with a decent catch. We started out chumming for rockfish and caught a few rockfish with a decent 23 incher and a 19 incher that I threw back hoping for a nicer keeper. It never came. Oh well. Most people ended up with a limit, with fish ranging from 16-27 inches. There were also some huge croakers being caught in the chum slick. I also caught a small bluefish. I believe the only one the whole trip. Once the sun went down, the rockfish went away. We then switched to bottom rigs and there was a decent pick of croakers for the rest of the night. The boat provided squid and shrimp as bait. Foodfan brought some purdue peelers that he let me try out and I was impressed. I was getting more hits on the chicken than anything else. I ended up with 20 croakers ranging from 12-17 inches with the majority of them in the 15 inch range. I'm not sure what Foodfan's group ended up with, but he had a nice mess of croakers and 4 nice rockfish. Overall it was slower that my trip last year but still was a great trip. The mates were great as usual. I would recommend this boat to anyone.
-Anthony

 

[foodfan]

Had a good night fishing on Olympus with my son, a buddy and Anthony Saturday night. Anthony's message provides most of the details. My group ended up with 4 rockfish 19", 23", 24" and 25", and 37 croaker 12" - 17", many being quite chunky. After cleaning, final catch was about 4 lbs rock filets and 12 lbs. croaker filets.

Chicken soaked in peeler oil worked best for croaker, although they were not shy about biting squid. Ironically, I brought the chicken in search of trout, but caught more croaker. Also tried cut alewive/menhaden on my bottom rig trout -- and again caught croaker!!

Of note, weather on Saturday was very hot with heat advisory on shore. Turned out to be quite nice on the water.

Overall a good night, filled the cooler and needed to borrow Anthony's bucket to hold 8 croaker caught in last 30 minutes until we got back to shore. Olympus crew once again came through, my son (12) had a great time, and I met a fellow P&Ser to share the ride and some good fishing. Thanks Anthony! Let's go out again later in the summer