Dean Ween and Les Claypool are planning a winter fishing trip in Florida. It's bound to be an adventure, with big game, witty banter and maybe a little music.

They are inviting fans to join them on the jaunt, auctioning off seats on the boat to benefit the Long Beach Island Surf Fishing Classic, which lost funding after Hurricane Sandy. Details about the online auction will be announced this week on the website, mickeysfishing.com.

Mickey Melchiondo, aka Dean Ween, traditionally competes in the LBI tournament, surfcasting for striped bass in Holgate. His hobby has evolved into a business, as he operates a charter boat, the Archangel out of the Belmar Marina. The 42-year-old guitarist is a licensed captain who's been fishing full time since Ween split up last year.

Commuting to Jersey from his home in New Hope, Pa., the Deaner fishes with fans, musicians and, occasionally, his son, Michael.

After Melchiondo learned the LBI contest was in danger of getting canceled, he organized a benefit concert, Dean Ween & Friends, set for Oct. 6 at the Sea Shell in Beach Haven. Guests include Chris Harford, Dave Dreiwitz and Billy Walton, formerly of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.

Tickets are sold out but Ween enthusiasts can still participate in the fundraiser via the online auction. In addition to the trip with Claypool (best known as the frontman of the band Primus), Melchiondo is offering an excursion out of Belmar with guest angler, Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers.

Melchiondo will be in nautical mode through most of the autumn, pursuing blues and stripers with charter clients off the Jersey coast. During the winter, it's back to rock. The Trenton native is going on tour to promote a new album by his experimental noise collective, the Moistboyz. Melchiondo also has a television project in the works, a reality fishing series costarring Claypool that is being shopped to cable networks.

Mickey Melchiondo of the group, Ween, proudly displays the striped bass he just caught in the Delaware River. Melchiondo, aka, Dean Ween, leads a double life as fishing guide/rock guitarist.

A Ween reunion remains unlikely on the near horizon but Melchiondo said that he has been exchanging texts and emails with vocalist, Aaron Freeman, aka Gene Ween.

Freeman abruptly quit the band last year and went solo, seeking a lifestyle change after a long struggle with addiction. It was the end of a songwriting partnership that began in middle school. The bond between Melchiondo and Freeman sustained Ween for more than 25 years, as they evolved from a precocious lo-fi duo into a virtuosic quintet.

For a devoted cult of Boognish disciples, Freeman and Melchiondo were like Lennon and McCartney, only better because they toured. Their diverse fan base reflected the unpredictable nature of their albums and shows. They often retreated to LBI to write songs in a Holgate rental house that now stands abandoned.

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During a stormy afternoon in Belmar, Melchiondo discussed Ween, fishing and LBI, sitting outside a pub near the marina where the Archangel is docked. Below is an edited transcript.

Q. Have you been getting a lot of Ween questions on the boat?

A. Yeah. I'm pretty good with it. I get it from my parents. I get it from everybody. Everybody asks me about Ween all the time. It's gonna go on forever probably. My grandmother, my mother and father, "Have you spoken with Aaron?"

Q. Have you talked to him?

A. Not really. Not in person. It's text messages, e-mails. It's mostly goofy s---. We send each other funny YouTube videos or, "You wouldn't believe this just happened."

Whatever the process is of Ween, whether Ween gets back together or not, it hasn't come to the point yet where something is about to happen. If we get back together or when we get back together, I would like to think that we both will want to do it really badly and it won't be something like money that makes it happen again. Right now, it hasn't been so long where I don't remember exactly what it was like and I feel like if we had to do a show tonight, I'm ready for it. I know exactly how the day would play out. I can imagine talking to Aaron, seeing Aaron, getting picked up in a van, going to the gig, doing the sound check.

Q. You feel like you need more time or do you have a sense that Aaron needs more time?

A. It can't happen without it being right and joyous. Ween is a happy, joyous thing. It makes people happy. It makes people smile. It makes people laugh. It makes people rock out. If we're up there and we're not happy then the whole thing is a catastrophe and it was trending towards that and it wasn't my decision to stop it but I'm not dumb enough not to see that it was wounded. It wasn't where it should be. It wasn't fun all the time.

Seeing as how it's been a year and nothing has really been said or communicated, I doubt that in the next month or two you're going to see us on stage but maybe in the next week or two the process will start, whatever that process is. I have nothing more to say about it because I haven't talked to Aaron. I can only speak for myself. I feel completely differently about Ween than I did two months ago. And two months before that, I felt completely differently about it and maybe six months before that, I was really pissed at Aaron.

Q. The anger, you worked through that?

A. I didn't have that for very long. When you break it down, we should have taken a couple of years off. We were at that point. It was 28 years with nothing but Ween. It was time to take a break. That's what we should have done. You can ask Aaron what he thinks and I bet in his heart of hearts, that's maybe what he wishes he had done, just ask for three to five years off. But I get it. He needed to take charge of his situation and take control of his life. I wasn't that empathetic at first. If we're not back together in six months, I'll probably even have more perspective on it. This benefit concert has nothing to do with Ween at all.

Q. The concert came together when you heard the derby might not happen this year?

A. I called Margaret at Jingle's (bait shop in Beach Haven) and told her I had a lot of experience doing benefits and we could raise the money ourselves. The derby brings tons of people to the island in October and November. Anybody that's spent time on LBI knows the best time of year is September, October and November when the tourists leave and the weather cools down and the businesses are still open. I've done a million drives to that island in the middle of the night. I set my alarm at 2 a.m. to go fish at tide.

Q. Are you motivated to continue participating in the derby because you haven't won yet? Do you think if you win the contest, you'd continue driving to the island in the middle of the night every year?

A. I'd still do it. There's this feeling in the air in September that happens every year. You get this chill in the air and the angle of the sun changes and you know it's time to surfcast for striped bass. You can taste it in the air. You know it's derby time. The height of it for me is driving through the Pine Barrens to LBI. I remember it from doing the Ween records down there and from surfcasting too where it becomes this Technicolor thing, like the leaves turn orange and red and brown and you're driving through the Pine Barrens and you feel like you're in a tunnel. Suddenly, you go from open light into the dark pines. It's psychedelic and you're driving through and you're going through your strategy like this is how I'm going to fish. My favorite memories in the world are fishing in that derby.

Q. Do you feel like being out on the boat this autumn can offset or negate the memories of Sandy?

A. Yeah. Nobody knows what to expect this fall. The fall before last fall was one of the greatest striped bass runs in recorded history in New Jersey. We caught more fish and everybody was in on it, the surfcasters, the fish stayed around the whole winter. It was a mild winter and the stripers stayed here. Everybody caught a million of them. It was the stuff of legend. This spring was a little bit off but we had bad weather. The water was cold. You hear people say it's global warming or Sandy and it's all bull----. The weather was crappy and the fish stayed a little bit too far offshore. They passed us by. They're having legendary fishing in Montauk and New England, the same body of fish that we should have had here.

Mickey Melchiondo of Ween pushes off the banks of the Delaware River in Trenton as he spends his morning fishing for striped bass on the Delaware River in 2011.

Q. Did you feel a need to be in this area during the autumn to get back a sense of normalcy?

A. Yeah. I love it. We fish April through December here in Jersey but I'm in it for May and June, and October, November. Summer fluking is fine but I'm in it for the two striper runs. Everybody is. I thought last winter was so horrible, I'd never get over it but once I got back to work fishing in the spring, that all melted away.

Q. How are things looking in terms of people booking autumn trips?

A. My thing is great but my thing is not representative of the other guys that depend on walkup charters. My people are Ween fans. They travel in from somewhere else. I'm blessed to have the Ween fans that still come and fish. People from Colorado don't even remember that we had a storm here until you remind them. You talk about Sandy and they go, "Oh yeah." I drove from Seaside to Belmar this morning. It's the first time I've been back, that whole stretch all the way from Seaside to here on Route 35.

Q. What made you decide to make that trip?

A. Dave Dreiwitz was playing a gig there last night so I drove down to see the gig and I stayed at my friend's rental. It's sort of morbid. When we were on LBI a few weeks ago, there was a brochure of things to do on LBI and it said, "Go to Holgate and see the hurricane damage." I hadn't done it so I went and I saw it for the first time. It was completely depressing. There were cars pulled over and people taking pictures. I wish I hadn't even gone to be honest with you. The Ween house is still there but it's going to be demolished I'm sure. It's like a million feet in the air. It's high and dry but it's unoccupied. The dunes used to come up to the back door. Now the beach is all eroded.

Q. Barnegat Light, it doesn't even look like anything happened.

A. That was what was so weird driving through Seaside to Belmar as the sun was coming up. Some of it is unmolested and then there's just long periods of wreckage. It's almost like the storm karate chopped certain places.

Q. What made you decide to have the concert in Beach Haven?

A. It's obvious. That's where my parents had the house growing up. Beach Haven and Holgate blend into one another. It's kind of one and the same place. It came together pretty fast. Everybody was so gracious. There was nobody that's been asked to do anything that hasn't said yes or volunteered themselves straight out without even being asked including the Sea Shell. It's a big step for the derby. It's been going on for over 50 years.

Mickey Melchiondo talks about what damage he saw in Belmar after Hurricane Sandy, from his small music studio in New Hope, PA. Mickey isn't just a rock singer, he is also a fisherman, who has a fishing guide service out of Belmar.

Q. Did you participate when you were a kid?

A. Yeah. I've been in the derby forever and ever.

Q. Are you hoping this year might be the year for you to win?

A. I always sign up because you get a free hat and a shirt. I want to win. I have as good a chance as anybody out there with a line in the water and I've put in a lot of time. Every time you put a line in the water in the fall in New Jersey, you've got a chance of catching a trophy striped bass to win the tournament. That's what is so cool about it.

Q. What was it like going out on the ocean for the first time this year after a rough winter?

A. That was wild. We got a striper on our first trip.

Q. That's unusual?

A. No. It's not guaranteed though. That whole ordeal last fall left a mark. I'm not completely over it yet. We're still distrustful of the fall coming up. I'm already nervous about the winter, going through another winter like last winter and I'm distrustful of something happening that wipes out the fall experience at the beach. It goes in cycles. You come here in the spring as soon as you can, even before you have charters booked and then you come into the summer and everyone descends on the beach towns and you can't get a seat at a restaurant on Friday night or Wednesday night or any night. There's these different periods of anticipation. In a way, we look forward to the summertime because now we're not fishing in jeans and parkas. Now we're fishing in shorts and flip-flops but it gets old with all the tourists. Just around the time you've had enough of it, the fall rolls around and everybody clears out and the stripers come back and the bluefish come back with them and just about the time it's getting too damned cold to fish, you're done for the year and it's Christmas and then just about the time you think you're going to lose your mind, the spring rolls around again. To have it disrupted in the fall like last year, it throws everything off and it felt endless.

Q. I was reading your fishing reports and you wrote that something happened on June 10 that you could write a chapter of a book about.

A. Oh, that's not for this.

Q. What happened?

A. It was one of those crazy Ween fans.

Q. I'm sure you're used to that.

A. Yeah, there's crazy Ween fans and then there's crazy Ween fans.

Q. I saw there was a guy who had a special Ween fishing shirt.

A. Yeah, a guy had a commemorative shirt. That's normal crazy. We get some other people who are just crazy. Every now and then, not too often.

Q. I thought you caught some huge miraculous fish.

A. No. That I would take a picture of.

Q. Is there one particularly memorable day that you had this summer that doesn't involve crazy Ween fans?

A. The most defining thing I had was a vacation I took with my parents on LBI. They rented a house right where I grew up on that island. I've been working a lot, fishing a lot. I work five days a week and on my two days off, I sleep. It was cool because I could sit around and figure out what was real and what wasn't. I got to really examine what was real thought and what was lying to myself. That's what I get out of the island. It puts me in that mindset. Every time I go there, I say, "Man, I want to live here."

Q. Why LBI?

A. That's my turf. That's my home beach. The fishing is a lot better up here in Belmar but this is urban to me. LBI is an island. It feels like one, especially when you get to the south end. It's slower. There are just a few places in the country that have that magical quality to them. Key West is one of them. Cape May is one of them.

Q. And Holgate.

A. Holgate is the same way. It doesn't feel like America even. You're at the end of the line.