Happy New Year to all my fishing friends and family out there. Today I went out commercial fishing with my friend Paul who has been asking me for years to go out with him. Besides being one of the clammers we pass going out each morning fishing on my boat, he puts in fike nets during the short winter season. They consist of stakes or pipes put in the bottom by hand in the mud. There is a long leader of net starting off in shallow water and it leads to the catch part of the net where the fish can't get out. It leads then into a tapered net funnel, then they go further into the net to the next tapered funnel. Once past that second funnel, they are in the "parlor" and they can't escape. It is just like the commercial nets we see in the bay but on a much smaller scale. We went out in a 16 foot old row boat with a 40 hp engine. What a day with the weather. The weather man was predicting a gale warning with 50 mph gusts. Well........... for once he was right!!! It was not too bad way up in the Navasink river or all the way up into Red Bank. We pulled the three nets he had out in different areas. All the spots produced winter flounder and herring. He limited out with the 50 lbs. of flounder he is allowed and some of the flounder were over 3 lbs.!! Super sized fish. Plenty of smaller fish were thrown back healthy with many of those being keepers as well. We also landed about 30 lbs. of herring. These fish were beautiful and I could only wish I had these fish in a live well on my boat to catch stripers. The weather showed us: sun, rain, sideways hail, black clouds, wind to 40 mph, snow, and large white caps. But we also saw swans, brant ducks by the hundreds, a lamprey eel, and two rainbows in the sky !! All of this was done in just over 2.5 hrs. We launched the boat, after trailering it from his house in Highlands to Rumson, at 8 am. We were back at his house at 10:30 am, even after driving the fish back by truck to Belford Co.op to pack them out. What a different experience and what a morning! I am still trying to get dry and warm up with a hot cup of coffee while I write this.