Double Creek Channel Gets More Adventurous

It's not that the Double Creek Channel was ever a particularly good channel, but if you thought it was bad before, it's now worse.

Double Creek Channel is southern Ocean County's route to Barnegat Inlet, and the wonderful fishing opportunities that come with such a prime location. After my boat was splashed late last week, a series of technical difficulties and, well, this very job here at Patch, kept me from fishing the first few days of fluke season. But with a window on Thursday, I gave it a shot.

The first odd sign: the 43 marker in Barnegat Bay has, for whatever reason, disappeared. Or I was quite off course. One or the other; feel free to post a pic to this article and prove me wrong if I am. Anyway, as we all know, the 42 marker officially marks the start of the Double Creek Channel. It looked like its normal, skinny, dog-legged self at first, but mid-way through, the water color lightened significantly and I noticed two "Caution: Shallow Water" buoys floating near the north end of the channel. My depth finder bottomed out at 5-feet of water around mid-tide during the incoming. The same situation, light-toned water and "caution" buoys, would repeat itself a few markers down, closer to High Bar Harbor.

As few people were out, I motored my way through with no problems, but on a busy weekend, my advice would be to hug the south side of the channel as much as possible while dodging the minefield of boats that will be fluke fishing.

On the fluke front, all advice I've heard – from Manasquan to Little Egg Harbor – this week seems to point to a summer flounder population that is finding our local waters a bit too chilly. Apparently, they only like the outgoing-to-low tide when the water temperatures are a few degrees higher. This was proved during my aforementioned trip down (or is it up?) the Double Creek Channel, which resulted in a fruitless fluke effort. A few other disgruntled mariners shared their similarly-woeful stories as they motored up and gave me the universal "goose egg" sign, representing a skunking on the incoming.

Bass seem to be all over the place, however. I went out for a sunset ride close to the dock a few hours after my ill-fated fluke voyage and caught and released stripers for about an hour. When it got dark, I headed back in as the bite was turning off.

Around the region, striped bass seems to be the targeted species of choice despite the fact that fluke season has begun. The party boats out of Point Pleasant Beach and Brielle have whacked 'em off Bay Head and Mantoloking on jigs, so I've heard. Surf fishing has been decent up-and-down the coast in Ocean and Monmouth counties.

While writing an article this week for Brick Patch on , I stopped by Lightning Jack's III Marina and ran into some folks who had just returned from a bluefish slaughter in the river. They were carving them up when I arrived. Word is that they caught them near Treasure Island. I also heard a few summer flounder have been caught – wait for it, now – by the Route 70 bridge. You didn't hear it from me.

Since it's that time of year, feel free to start sending in your fishing photos to be featured here. Reach out to me at daniel.nee@patch.com.