Fishing In an Era of So Many Options
By Chris Jobes
When I first started fishing offshore out of Cape May in the late 1980s, things were pretty simple. We’d tune in to the NOAA weather radio for the inshore and offshore forecast and head out if the conditions didn’t look like more than we could handle. Our ride, the first Pair of Docs, was an old 40-foot Viking powered by Detroit Diesel 671 naturals — a real tank, though a slow one. Every now and then, we’d get caught in some sloppy seas or a passing band of storms, but that was just part of the game. We worked with the information we had.
Once we decided to go, the next question was where. With limited intel, it was usually the Wilmington or Baltimore Canyon, maybe the 19 Lump or the Elephant’s Trunk — and if we were feeling bold, all the way down to the Poorman’s. Honestly, the fishing was so consistently good back then that it didn’t matter much where we ended up. We trolled and/or we chunked. It all depended on when the last
