2023 went out fairly quietly. It was a decent year overall, well, as far as fishing. But that is for another post. Today is about the kick off to 2024. I had three good, hard fishing, friends lined up for a long day of chasing tog and stripers. Unfortunately, one of those friends got a bad case of Montezuma's revenge, the other had to pick up their kid and his bride to be after they parties a bit too hard last night. He was rewarded with a truck full of vomit. Suffice to say, both bailed out. So, I met Jesse at the boat ramp, we loaded up, and ran out of the inlet to see what the new year might bring. We ran to a lump that often holds stripers this time of the year. There were a few boats trolling around, and a few scattered gannetts cruising at altitude. There were a few scattered marks on the sounder that could have been stripers, but they were few and far between. So, we cruised on. We ran south in hopes of running into a school of stripers, or a big bird play, or just some other boats hooking up. Nothing to be found. Seemed everyone was doing what we were doing...searching. After about an hour we cruised out and found a little sneaky wreck, spot locked over it, and tried for tog. We got a few, lost a few, but it wasn't great. We ran back north and locked up on another wreck. Loads more action, but all short tog. We didn't land any keepers, but we're fairly certain we lost a few. Jesse was the high hook while togging. I started off with jigs to no avail. I kept losing fish, so I switched up to a rig. I started catching at least. Jesse continued his assault on the tog below. After about an hour of steady hits and misses, the tog shut down. We moved over different parts of the wreck, but it was a tough pick. Around this time I received a text that a friend of a friend had found some stripers while trolling just inside of where we were. We picked up and ran to see if we could find something worthwhile. Nope. With stripers not making an appearance we decided to go find more tog. And we did. We locked up over the structure and dropped down chunks of green and white legger crabs, which were almost immediately attacked and devoured by voracious tog below. Jesse hammered three nice, but short, tog right off the jump. I finally got my fish mojo going and started to catch as well. I was able to put the only two keepers of the day into the live well on back to back drops. I don't always catch a lot, but I catch keepers. Remember that Jesse! Jesse decided to scan the surroundings with the binoculars. He caught a glimps of white flashes inside of our position. Possibly gannetts diving on bait? We picked up and moved well inside, and sure enough, there were gannetts. And seagulls. And they were pounding the water! Death from above, and we hoped below. We dropped some jigs down and found stripers. Suddenly the sounder was lit up with hundreds of stripers, school after school swimming through chasing bunker. It was awesome! Jesse switched up to a flutter spoon. He came tight quick. After he landed a few, and my jig remained quiet, I switched up. Stripers like flutter spoons. We started to notice fish on top too. Stripers were chasing bunker right on the surface. I put on a Mag Darter, Jesse grabbed an SP Minnow. We both hooked up quickly. We had absolute striper madness for about two hours. I landed 21, Jesse landed 17. We each lost as many that somehow, unimaginably, spit the hooks. We hooked up from the surface to the bottom, and everywhere in between. It was an absolute blast! We finally called it quits as the sun began to dip below the horizon. It was really hard to leave the melee. But running g the back in the dark, with no spotlight, isn't much fun. And we were getting close to low tide which just adds to the fun. All in all, it was a killer way to ring in the new year. Loads of fun, ball busting, and laughs, with a good friend. 2024 is off to a great start. Hopefully the rest of the year goes this well...