The places Shinn was talking about are familiar names like the Farms, 17 Fathoms and even the outside areas of the Shrewsbury Rocks. The Rocks run from the beach off Sea Bright out a few miles. Private boaters were catching them on even small lumps like the Klondike and Manasquan Ridge throughout most of the season, but the party boats tend to go to larger structure areas where the concentrations of fish better suit their passenger carrying capacity.

"We never had to go far to find them and the fishing was literally nonstop from May right on through. We were day-fishing with chum and bait from May 10 on and we added a schedule of night trips starting in June," he reported. "The fishing was so good during the day that the number of people showing up for night trips suffered, but it was just great to have fishing that steady."

What Captain Shinn meant by steady was there wasn't even a lull in the action in July when bluefish tend to disappear for a few weeks and move offshore to spawn. During that time frame, the daytime fishing usually suffers, but the fish were there and biting after the sun went down.

The blues were consistent in size throughout the year, too. The majority of bluefish caught on the northern spots were 5 to 8 pounds, which is a nice average. However, Shinn said there were weeks when the same spots would get covered up with really big fish. During those blasts, the pool winners were always in the high teens and they had fish during the year that were pushing the magical 20-pound mark.

When Capt. Shinn was asked to look into the crystal ball and predict what he thought the bluefish action might be like in 2005, he threw me a curve. "I don't know for sure, but if it's half as good as it was last year, I'll be thrilled and so will my passengers!"

Capt. Shinn also mentioned that while most of his patrons simply fished cut bait, mostly bunker backs, in the slick, he had a growing number of anglers who only used jigs. They usually did as well, if not better, than the people using bait.

BARNEGAT
LIGHT BLUES
I caught up with Captain John Larson, skipper of the 90-foot catamaran, Miss Barnegat Light (609-494-2094), at the dock in Fort Myers, Florida, where he takes the boat for the winter months to run trips to the Dry Tortugas for snapper and grouper. (He comes back to New Jersey in May.) Although he was feeling a little under the weather at that time with a cold, he was quick to praise the bluefishing in New Jersey waters last year.

"We start running for blues out of our berth in Barnegat Light in mid- May, sometimes even a little earlier," Larson said, "and last year, they arrived early and stayed late, keeping us busy. In fact, the fishing was so good that our patrons started getting a little tired of it. Sometimes too easy isn't always the best thing."

Larson didn't have to run very far to catch bluefish, spending the majority of the season fishing just one spot: the Barnegat Ridge. "The fish moved right in and never left all year," he reported. "The only problem we ran into from time to time was a few commercial boats setting their gill nets right on top of the Ridge, which meant we'd have to move to different structure. Sometimes they would take so many fish in a few days that the fishing would slow down until more fish moved into the area. That didn't take very long, though, and I guess everyone has to make a living."