November 28, 2021 – I Think I Say This At the Start of Every Fall…. – Ocean County Beaches

A start.

…you have to start somewhere.  I was standing waist-deep at the end of a sandbar before sunrise today with peanut bunker swimming by my feet and birds hovering just out of reach, but I did not get a touch and no one on the crowded beaches behind me landed a fish.  The tide was not great, sure, and the seas were flat and the water ultraclean, but there was a chance for some fun if the bass got the memo.  Hovering birds, not diving birds.  It sounds like they were diving in the snottier weather earlier in the long weekend, but I was here today.  Peanut bunker blitzes are a bit harder to dial in than a consistent sandeel bite like we have had for the last few years, but there are also benefits to a peanut bite.  It’s been a while, maybe over 5 years, but it will come back to me. I do know that I used to love it when they were around late in the fall because sometimes they were gone, like mullet, before the migrating fish even got close to Ocean County. I am confident that one day in the upcoming week it will come together.  Peanuts are always on the move, and so are the bass, but not always south.  Sometimes they range along a barrier island for a few days, or sometimes the right wind and tide pushes them in close for some mayhem.  The sandeel bite is a 90 minute drive for two hours of good fishing around sunrise, whereas a bonkers peanut day could last all day if you are willing to hop around and follow the action.  I was technically solo today, but I was in contact with Pete at a couple scheduled times.  He was with another buddy a few miles away, and he was in contact with a dozen others, and no one in that circle caught this morning, despite all the bait!  Facebook, of course, will tell a different story, but there are a lot of rods on FB and a lot coastline in Jersey.  The thing with peanuts is you just have to be there (or be close and/or patient) when lightning strikes.  At least I shook off the cobwebs and my waders don’t leak.