A New Personal Best for Alan Goracy by Ed Valitutto

Posted on August 22, 2023 by VHFC

When Alan Goracy asked me to go fishing on Monday, I reluctantly said okay since Alan had to leave by early afternoon and I couldn’t last much longer than that. Last week, I was with a group of members who traveled to Nantucket for two charters, but that story will be in the next Newsletter. We started in the new channel leading to the CG station and had a few shorts and a bluefish. We fished a few drifts in the inlet, but nothing was biting. We then decided to fish near the horn buoy about 2 miles outside the inlet.

Immediately we started being attacked by sea robins. Then we got a few fluke including 2 that were close and 1 keeper that escaped while waiting for the net. Then Alan got a slot fish and we decided to redrift the area. Good thing we did. Alan landed a real fat 24 incher that went 6 lbs on my Boga scale. It was his personal best and a real surprise. With that we headed back home.

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Fishing Facts

Of the fifty United States, thirty-eight have a striped-bass record. New Jersey has the largest striped-bass record—a 78-pound 8·ounce whopper that was caught in 1982. The state with the smallest striped-bass record is Iowa. That landlocked striper weighed only 9 pounds 4 ounces and was caught in 1983.

There’s something fishy about beer these days. Fish Tail Ale is popular as ever, and New Jersey’s Flying Fish Brewery is one of the state’s largest specialty breweries. There’s also Washington’s Wild Salmon Organic Pale Ale, Florida’s Land Shark beer, Delaware’s Dogfish Head beer, and two versions of Stingray beer—a lighter version from the Cayman Islands and a dark beer from Canada.

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