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| Dead sea: Good fish handling fatality? |
Despite hosting this blog and belonging to the PAFlyfish
forum, I stay off social media. I can
proudly say that I don’t have a Facebook or Instagram account. I don’t care much for social media reports of
fishing, either. Most hot bite reports
are at least a day late, but I have seen real time social media impact on the
crowds. “You gotta get here now!” posts with
a well-known landmark in the background.
How do I know if I am not on the platforms? Well, it is nearly impossible to avoid
getting second-hand reports if you have fishing friends. It was the Silver Fox this time who let me
know about the blitzes on Monday, but I had already gotten texts from others
with boots on the ground too. It will be
Dolf next. I just fish, typically. When the time is right, I fish the days I
have available. You mean it’s the third
week of November, the ocean temps are under 55 F, a strong West wind is
blowing and striped bass are being caught?
Wow!? Really? Hahaha.
That is sort of like saying, It’s mid-May and trout are eating these
yellow flies with two tails every evening! Just go fishing, mitches ;)
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| A gorgeous day for humans to have a stroll or a boat ride. |
Anyway, fish have been around, and the boy is home for a
long Thanksgiving break, the longest I have ever experienced, and I have worked
at colleges most of my life. He was
basically done on Friday and does not return to campus until Sunday, November 30. He was up for an early rise this morning, so
I spent Saturday afternoon going through my surf plugs and gear to see what I
could throw together for my first visit to the surf since the summer. His waders still fit, and I found some nice
plugs and metals and shads that would do the trick if we were lucky enough to
get fish in casting range. It was going
to be a morning of driving around and looking for birds, bait, boats, jamokes, jadrools,
jabronis, even the errant stocker locker on a lifted Taco. The boy likes to catch fish, not stare at the
water and blind cast like his dad.
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| The Boy didn't forget how to cast or get up early. |
We arrived before sunrise but with enough light to dress
like civilized humans. It was cold on
the way down, like 27F at one point, but the wind was light out of the West, so
my gut was telling me it was going to be way too nice of a day to catch
bass. I wanted to be wrong, and we
covered enough ground to get one potential shot at a small blitz. It was just out of reach, even for me with a
10 ft rod, 30 lb braid, no teaser, and a 3 oz pencil. We covered Bradley Beach to Seaside and back
to at least Point Pleasant, mostly looking.
About two hours into the falling tide, we saw a small pod of birds and
bait moving south, so I convinced the Boy to give it one last shot. This was a lucky stretch of beach where he
got a fish last year, so I was hopeful that the spot had some unknown magic. There was too much water to see any real
structural reasons why this beach could be a thing. Anyway, they never got quite close enough and
a bunch of amateur captains actually powered right into the schools. I saw this a couple times today, in
fact. They just put them down. We saw no fish caught, not even on the boats,
and one woman out for a stroll in the beautiful weather said she asked everyone
for a couple miles, and no one caught fish this morning. It was a start, at least. I have my stuff ready, and Thanksgiving morning
looks just snotty enough to get me out of bed in the wee hours to give it
another shot.
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| Big sky with jamokes, jadrools, jabronis, and mitches. |
Take him sunny fishing :-)
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