 |
| ...like the first morning. |
I don’t know where November went, and I can’t believe I have not fished since late October, but I guess life happens. There was a time not that long ago when I put a lot of miles on my vehicles going east to the ocean and bays. I spent nearly 10 years renting a shore house on LBI with Ward and friends, and we fished a lot for fluke and weakies all summer. He had a 28’ center console (replace by family and golf clubs for the time being) and I had a couple backbay boats (one still sitting in my driveway waiting for something, perhaps the boy…). I also acquired my surf fishing passion around that time, reintroduced by my boy Adolf, who spent the summers of his youth at his Grandma Helen’s place in Beach Haven West. For many years, from mid-November to late December, I would make a least one long trip per week to surf fish for bass and blues. Even my early spring trout fishing was interspersed with back bay and surf fishing for bass. I think all that changed after Sandy. The Ocean County beaches I frequented were changed drastically, and then the resulting replenishment efforts up and down the coast put an even bigger damper on the fishing, especially the fall run, burying jetties and filling cuts and holes, places that would make a bait fish and bass come in close to shore. My rediscovery of fly fishing and my trips to the beach not being worth my time and money directly coincided. I stayed away from the fall and winter after Sandy, except to help a family friend clean up on LBI and to lead a service trip to Breezy Point, NY; instead, I trout fished all winter and got pleasantly sidetracked.
My hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars’ worth of
salt water gear has been calling my name again this year. I took time before Thanksgiving to clean and
oil reels and tie teaser rigs and put together a plug bag, and then work got
crazy and family got sick and… But today
was the day. The conditions and tides
were right, the temp was nice, and I had a “sick day” to burn. I was up at 2:30 AM, too excited to sleep
until the alarm went off at 3 AM, and I got on the road by 3:30 AM. Not having done any scouting and purposely
not reading reports while I was not able to fish (just makes things worse!) I
fished blind at some old haunts, a stretch of beach on the north end of the
island that had undoubtedly changed since I last walked the beach. I fished in the dark for a couple hours
without a bump, throwing a black Daiwa SP minnow with a black feather
teaser. When the sun came up, I saw that
there was a lot more sandbar than I remembered, and even the exposed jetties
(or re-exposed jetties – nature vs Army Corp of Engineers?) were covered in
pumped sand in shallow water. I took
advantage of one such massive bar, and waded out when I had enough light to see
my feet.
The conditions were great until about 8 AM: clean
water, enough wave action from a SE swell to create whitewater despite the
strong west wind, which usually knocks the surf down flat. While out close to the outer edge of the bar,
I got that familiar bump of a striped bass unloading on the T-Hex and teaser I
had chosen so I could get out deeper with my casts. In their native element, the surf zone, bass
fight so well. A healthy fish, but a
short of about 27 inches hung from my black teaser after a short battle. He hit right at the outer lip of the bar, not
20 feet from my feet. Fun, I tell you,
fun. Standing out on the bar with waves
rolling by, I left my phone under my dry top and quickly released the fish,
hoping his cousins were swimming along the bar with him. I caught no other fish, so no fish pics, but
I did snap the shot above before I waded in from the increasing surf. By 8:30 AM, the wind against tide was
stirring up the waves, and I was getting more weeds on the line, and I certainly
didn’t expect fish to be active in bright sunshine, so I called it a
morning.
One fish on the line, and I am already plotting my
next trip to the beach, maybe Saturday morning with my dad. I can trout fish all winter, but these bass
won’t be here forever. There were plenty
of signs that things could be good next time: gannets diving for bunker a half-mile from shore, some
nice cuts and holes to break up the bars, great reports from the boats working
in-shore. It’s a long ride, but the
scenery, the exhilaration of being waist deep in the ocean in December, that
alien tug on the line in the pitch black night…
I can see why I was hooked for so long…
Am hooked again??
As a bonus, I got to stop by a favorite store on the
island, Fisherman’s Headquarters in Ship Bottom. My sister gave me a gift certificate for my
birthday back in April, and I finally got to use it on something I really don’t
need: more plugs! Thanks ANo! Maybe she’ll bring me better luck next time;
that is if spending a weekday on the beach on a 50 degree December day can be
considered bad luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment