North Beach Sandy Hook Jigging Fluke in the Surf

Keeper fluke I took for dinner. I was careful about the reel, but I could have made a mistake.

Nice drive down, already 83 degrees shortly after 11:00. Sunshine, light traffic--not bad. I seemed to arrive on Sandy Hook sooner than I expected. 

I wanted to fish North Beach. Years ago, I tried that beach, impressed with how deeply it drops off. I rode all the way up to McFly's on the Hook, and bought some beef jerky there. Then I continued on my way. 

I soon found lot J, where nothing seemed to indicate North Beach, so I looked up on my mobile device how to get there. According to AI, I had to go to Lot I, which wasn't distant. And after I got there and unloaded, studying a publicly displayed map informed me that Lot J works, too.

Either way in, it's an arduous walk. I remembered something of that from before, but I didn't remember as much as it really amounts to. Still, it might have been only half a mile. 

You're walking in sand. I had taken my sneakers off and left them behind, and you know how dry sand is, if you've ever sunk feet into it. But even so, it was firmer than some dry sand is. 

Pretty hot, too. The temp was about 80 when I left my car. Cooler than back on the mainland, with the westerly coming across the bay, but not by much. 

I haven't done well for fluke in recent times. The best of the outings amounted to two fluke caught at Barnegat Inlet while fishing with Fred Matero last September, and I think I caught one little one each time I fished Island Beach. Those IBSP outings involved enjoying the beach with my wife and black Lab Loki. We didn't go there this summer, though. I left Bedminster confident, thinking I might catch a few, and that that would be enough. But when I started casting the surf, to the right of shallows with waves breaking on them, I felt as if I'd get skunked. I would have logged the trip in my handwritten log--I do every time I fish--but I was thinking it would be awful to post here about yet another skunker, especially when, all summer, I've been catching so few fish. Brenden Kuprel and I did well on that South Branch Raritan River float trip, though.

I walked a little further to the right and laid a cast down leftward. I think the fish struck on the initial descent, but in any case, I set the hook deftly and fought a 14-incher I didn't photograph, my camera in my backpack well above the waterline. But the next fluke came pretty quickly thereafter, hitting when my retrieve was almost done. That fish might have been a a half inch better. I decided to get a quick shot of that one.

Even further to the right of those shallows--they began to appear distant--I caught one about 12 inches long. All three of these fish hit the anchor jig, not the teaser. I was using a pink half-ouncer with a pink Berkley Gulp twister on it. My teaser--a Z-Man Elaztech straight tail.

I've often admitted that I get hunches that seem to put me on fish in a mysterious way. I'm sure many fishermen experience the same, but it's not talked about. The trip neared it's end with my upper back paining me. I had fished little more than two hours, but the pain I experienced concerned me less than what pain I might feel during the long trudge back. I was also getting feelings about the water right next to the shallows. 

Rather than ignore those feelings, I positioned myself and put a cast in the area that comprised the edge. I began jigging my rig back, felt a fish take it, set hard, and fought a pretty good-sized fluke, that head shake leaving me no doubt. When I saw it in the clear surf, I knew I probably had a keeper. This one hit the Elaztech teaser. It measured 18-1/16 inches.      

Maybe a half inch better than 14 inches.

Surf Fishing with Hutch

 

Catching Some Little Ones As If One Might Be Good Sized

Fred Matero with one of his two little Harvey Cedar's fluke.

We had a serious problem with northeast wind yesterday. First thing we did on the island, after stopping at Fisherman's Headquarters, where I bought some hooks and sinkers, was grab a look at the surf, and it was all a rage. I hadn't expected it to be so bad. Next, we rode all the way to Barnegat Light and got a look at the jetty. The end of it appeared unfishable, waves breaking all the way across, and all the way back our way to the middle, water was on the rocks. If we were to go out there and fish that middle portion, which is the least we'd have wanted to do, we'd have probably got soaked. Not only with the temperature not quite 70, but with a backpack I want to keep in good condition, Fred's gear, and our preference for accessing the rocks without need of cumbersome Korkers cleats, though we each had a pair of them in Fred's SUV, the rocks weren't something we felt eager to hike out to. In fact, we abandoned our plan to do that altogether. 

We went to our bayside spot. I cast a jig & Gulp, with a Z-Man Elaztech tied above that jig on a dropper loop. I wasn't expecting anything, but last Fred fished here recently, a 20-incher got caught, and he had one on, so I did make the best of each cast. And on one of them, I got hit right in close before I would have lifted for the next cast, lifted to set the hook, and had what felt like a 16-inch fluke on for a couple of seconds. Fred witnessed all that, but I told him the same anyhow, and he said, "You never know. When the guy hooked the 20-incher it felt like nothing till he got it to the surface and it ran."

I finally got my rig snagged, broke off the jig, and switched to bait in vague hopes of a nice tautog. It's rare that a really good one gets caught here, but the place draws a contingent of regulars that fish here all the time. Maybe they're just hooked, regardless of what gets caught, and what gets caught, in fact, are always little fish. But the jetty isn't too far away, and keeper tog do get caught on it. Sheepshead, too, though the sheepshead are relatively uncommon. So, who knows? I had it in me to give it a sincere try, more than I did last time. And I did hook something somewhat nice, like a 12-inch tog, big enough that I had to work the reel & rod hard to keep it out of the rocks, which I failed at doing! It got snagged in such a way that I could feel its body pulsing--not exactly a "little" fish--but I still couldn't get it unsnagged, not even by giving it slack for long periods of time.

In the meantime, one of the guides on the Tica Fred was using for baiting tog broke. The ring had popped out of the metal frame. He told he figured he could glue it. Told me about the brand he'd use, though I forget which epoxy. Then things got worse after he continued to use it and that ceramic ring broke. He felt disappointed because he's going to Florida soon and wanted to use the rod there. But he told me he had been looking for an excuse to buy a new Tsunami rod. I told him I had bought my Tica to replace a Tsunami. I didn't tell him this, but yeah, a Tsunami that was of the same size as my Tica. I couldn't remember, though, and still can't, what went wrong with the Tsunami. 

At the end of our excursion, we would stop back in at Fisherman's Headquarters, where Fred left his Tica to be repaired, because there's no point in trashing an otherwise good rod because of a 20-dollar fix. It will take longer to get done than when he leaves for Florida, however, so he has his excuse.  

I caught some little fish as I continued to fish as if one of them might be good sized, and I enjoyed it. I guess when you're open to the water in front of you, what comes out of it, in fact, feels good. Fred had told me about a spot in Harvey Cedars, and that it would be best to fish it before the tide gets low. Since the tide was on its way out, I felt ready to go, but I gave our spot my blessing, as if, just maybe, it would yield a nice one some day. 

The Harvey Cedars spot has no tog and sheepshead structure. It's open water of at least six feet, near the Intracoastal Waterway channel. Fred hadn't been there in years, but he's caught small fluke, weakfish, and I believe he said cocktail blues. Today, we get some bites from small stuff that resulted in Gulp twister tails being bit off. I got a couple of hits on the Elaztech teaser I think were small fluke. You know that's where the hit came, when the Elaztech is no longer straight but pulled down into a curve on the hook. And by fishing the cove pretty hard, Fred ended up with two small fluke. 

Black Seabass

From the spot where we caught a number of small ones.

Bergal, also known as cunner.

Northeast Wind Probably Not as Bad

 

Good Day Forgetting Online Tedium

Nearing exit 67 where I would leave the Garden State Parkway, I got a text. When I got to Fred's house, he was outside awaiting me as he always does. We shook hands and began to catch up. I moved stuff from my car to his Subaru, but I also checked on that message. It was from my wife, telling me she had overlooked getting her car inspected last month. Put me in a tizzy. It took me awhile, but I re-slotted my schedule, all in my head, realizing I can probably get the car inspected in Randolph on Saturday...after I drop my canoe off. Back where I store it in the vicinity. Good thing I had that pinned down, although I didn't think to simply check my mobile device for the inspection station hours so I could be more sure. 

I suffered the four hours or so we fished the jetty, because of the insecurity of so much I have to do. Not just reminded of that, but having to shift plans. Computers are scary to me, because--in my experience--they always go wrong and I'm left to my own devices in setting them right again, until I have to seek professional help to get a computer fixed. The last I did that, the problem got solved in three minutes right at the front desk, and I wasn't charged. I've had bad experiences in the past. 

Right now, I'm stuck in the middle of building the new website, because my cursor became white against a white background in text blocks, so I can't effectively type. It's driving me nuts! I've been back and forth with support services for a week, and I can't imagine how the problem will be solved, besides maybe scrapping all my work and starting a new trial website. But then, will that one present the same problem? For the first week of working on the new site, the cursor worked fine, and I got a lot done.

It's not good for mental health to feel you're screwed by technical issues. I'm not a very technical sort to begin with. I'm a writer, and besides what I do for recreation, and the hobby of photography, I'd rather not do much else. I want to spend my time reading books and writing them. Reading my The Fisherman every month, too. Angler's Journal and The Flyfish Journal when they come. I don't want to wonder why in hell I'm singled out in this universe to have started building a website only to be unable, at least thus far, to complete it. From what the support service tells me, it happens to no one that all the hurdles are leaped and the problem remains. 

I'm one in a million.

So I was happy when Fred came up with the plan of moving on from the jetty at Barnegat Inlet to fish the beach on our way out with jigs for fluke, and then a certain bulkhead for triggerfish, blackfish, any possible sheepshead, and fluke. He had caught a fluke on his first cast on the ocean side of the jetty. Besides that, just a tiny seabass! We've always done well before. 

Fred said he got a hit as we fished the beach, if I remember rightly. When we had walked in, there was a guy doing well on live killies at the end of a groin that cuts across at a 45-degree angle from the end of the jetty. The wind wasn't bad. From the northeast and very light. When we had left the beach and got to that bulkhead, the surface of the water was flat. I caught a little seabass on one of Fred's previously frozen sand fleas and that was it, besides Fred's Gulp jig getting hit once. Someone else fishing there with a Gulp Jerk Shad had caught a keeper fluke.

I finally called it on the fishing. I'd felt better leaning against the rail and getting some interest at least from little fish tapping on that bait, but I got tired of it, nothing of any size intervening. For a moment, I had felt as if I'd rise out of my worries, but I fell into feeling pissed off about pressured fish! It's a weekday, yet the rails were crowded with fisherman, and though I have nothing else against people getting out and fishing, it can be annoying when no keepers seem to exist where they can be reached. I had felt good for about five minutes back on the jetty, when I got it in my head that if I persisted and covered ground, I might catch a sheepshead. But I lost three rigs to the rocks in about as many minutes in the attempt to do that, and it put me off.

Sure enough, not long before we left, someone came from the jetty end, done his morning's fishing, with a keeper bag containing a nice sheepshead and a keeper blackfish, so my intuition wasn't exactly groundless. I just wasn't aligned right to do it today.

"I think a nice cold Coke will do me well," I told Fred.

So we rode to the Neptune Market, got soft drinks, and sat out in front of the store on a bench and talked and talked. I began talking about pressured fish. I think that's how I got started. That led into problems of access, and from that, the pressure radical environmentalists are putting on recreational fishing. Fred mentioned PETA, which got me even more riled up. I'm only outlining what was said. I'm not going to triple the length of my post. But Fred made a really good point about our teeth betraying the fact that we're genetically suited to being omnivorous, and that led me to say something that made eating red meat sound like an exercise in metaphysics.

Just the same, to limit fish to aquaculture and commercial interests, picking on us recreational fishermen because we're somehow not serious, that won't go away. I can get very pessimistic about a dystopian future. 

I felt 100% better. We didn't talk about happy things, but we talked openly, and that lifted the cover off all the garbage stewing in me. My blog, Litton's Fishing Lines, is among the computer problems I mentioned earlier, too, as I really screwed up by offering you guys (and gals) "thin content" and "dodgy links" before I began to learn about Search Engine Optimization. That's when I promptly informed you I had to quit doing that. A lot of people liked those links! But now I have to go back and delete all those unindexed posts, because for the past four months, the Googlebot has not been indexing my new ones! You find them on other browsers and in the blog per se, but not as individually indexed for Google searches. 

We talked all the way back to Fred's house and some there. Turned out to be another good day when I forgot all the tedium of the online world.       

An old Sea Ray in the background.

Miss Barnegat Light

Four Years Ago

 

Shark River Pier Fluke on Jig and Gulp

In the choice between Farrington Lake and destinations further east, I wanted the adventure at the shore over a real long haul for my squareback canoe from Brian's house. Originally, I floated the idea of Twin Lakes in Kittatinny Valley State Park, but Brenden's good at Google Earth and got right on that, showing me the thickness of the aquatic vegetation between the "two" lakes seems to forbid passage. Besides, we'd have had to cart the canoe, and especially with the marine battery and electric motor, it's difficult to do that. The surface area of the "second" lake where the primitive launch is, isn't much.

It's still interesting, I admit.

Anyway, we had a good time at what we chose to do. Beginning at Manasquan Inlet, we threw metals and plugs for bluefish at high tide and before it actually stopped coming in, got slack, and began to drop. Brenden did hook one before that current turned. He thought that might bode well for us, as if the bluefish might turn on as the water turned out. He knew what he was thinking, because he's caught a lot of blues up to 10 pounds here this spring. Some of them turned on just after the tidal change. 

But pretty soon, I let him continue to throw for blues and switched to a jig and white Mister Twister. I had witnessed four fluke caught, so I was interested. As it turned out, nothing took any interest in my presentations. Nor did any more fish slam Brenden's. 

After more than two hours--the tide was going out--we abandoned hope for the inlet, and I felt eager to move on as if getting there as soon as we could might make a difference.

Whether or not it would have, Brenden caught fluke. We found a little pier on the Shark River adjacent to or belonging to a public park. At first, I feared this was going to be a bust, as if the water would be too shallow, but then again, I figured, if it were three or four feet deep, fluke might move over such a flat. 

It's more like six or seven feet, and plenty of fluke moved over it. Besides Brenden's three--two about 16 inches, another smaller--I saw four others caught, including one of 22 inches. We didn't fish shoulder to shoulder, but I felt it was crowded.  

When Brenden caught his third, a while after he had offered to lend me a white Berkley Gulp bait, I said, "Do you think the Gulp really makes a difference?"

"I have no doubt it does."

"I'll borrow one."

I also took him up on a half-ounce jighead like the one he used to get longer casts into the wind and better feel in the rough water. That replaced mine, 3/8th ounce. Let sink and then wiggle the rod tip as you retrieve at slow to moderate pace. The Gulp has no twister tail, but by jerking it around, the resemblance is of a baitfish. 

How sensitive to scent fluke really are, I have little idea, but given the mass of water out there today in the heavy northeast blow and swift, sideways tidal current, they must be very sensitive to scent for Gulp to really make that difference.

There's evidence it's true. Comparisons between Berkley Gulp and Zman to gain insight into scent dispersion suggest the molecules get to the nostrils of fish, and that one brand might do it better than another. But in any case, we caught no more fluke, though speaking for myself, I deeply enjoyed trying for some. We fished there about two-and-a-half hours that felt longer owing to my absorption into the process of attempting to make that river produce.

We drove on, arriving along Raritan Bay perhaps a half hour later. There's another pier, and I made for it. Brenden pointed out we wouldn't be able to net a big one, the distance between the rail and the water surface too much. 

To the left of that pier, a jetty looked inviting to me, and Brenden was interested in it. But the water had fallen to the point that sand was exposed in front. Little waves breaking to the side suggested very shallow depth. Casting confirmed that. We could have waded, but we decided to make a break for a much larger jetty about a half mile distant. Brenden told me it channels an inlet. I figured a small one, but no matter, any ancillary water might be interesting to fish.

It's small and might hold fish especially at high tide. But I hadn't noticed until then how muddy Raritan Bay's water. Inside that little inlet where boats pass from a marina--plenty off color but not as outright muddy. We made our way back where rocks are replaced by bulkheading.

The smell of creosote jogged my memory. It brought me back to when I was 12. I caught bullheads that impressed me as especially big at about 12 inches, in the Delaware and Raritan Canal at Lawrence Township, while sitting on bulkheading by a bridge. I came home to the inherent peace of the planet while people in the distance crabbed and fished, and although the experience was short lived, it still reminds me that all is well on earth, despite the acridity of ordinary life. 

Manasquan Inlet

 

Calico Bass in the Kelp and Rocks from a California Head Boat

Calico bass inhabit the kelp and rocks along the California coast. They fight hard, and the International Gamefish Association lists the world record at 14 pounds, seven ounces, caught at Newport Beach, California in 1993. Fish over five pounds are uncommon; aboard the Monte Carlo of 22nd Street Sportfishing, San Pedro, the biggest of well over a hundred caught was about four pounds. Matt's biggest was about 17 inches. Legal size is currently 14 inches, limited to a take of five. Between Matt and I, we took seven. I caught six fish, including a Pacific mackerel about a foot long, and Matt lost count, also catching a sand bass.

We might have had 30 guys and gals on the boat, including a few staff who joined in and caught calico bass near the end of our half day of six hours. The pool winner, however, was a 9.6-pound California halibut, the biggest of at least four of that species caught. Halibut are commonly caught, but not commonly in numbers like fluke get caught on head boats here in New Jersey. They're typically larger, though, and the IGFA world record is 67 pounds, five ounces. 

Bait supplied included live anchovies about six or seven inches long, and squid. Matt and I stuck to anchovies, and a lot of the bass got caught by others on jig and plastics and also colored diamond jigs. 

Just as well that I judged bringing our standup rods as too much of a hassle, and we rented rods, because those (spinning) rods supplied by the outfit for $15.00 apiece were not the extra-heavy power that would have been too much on these fish. Along with the rods, we were given a four-ounce torpedo sinker apiece, four quarter-ounce egg sinkers, and a pack of Mustad size 1 bait hooks of excellent quality; though we had to pay additionally for that tackle, we never needed more than that. We lost the torpedo sinkers and a couple of hooks to the rocks. Thereafter we used quarter-ounce egg sinkers that worked great.

Depths ranged between 35 and 50 feet, and we fished pretty close to the rocky beach here and there. Periodically, one of the mates netted and flung live anchovies out into the water we cast and dropped to, and more often than you might think, calico bass struck those anchovies on the surface. I once cast directly on top of where a bass had broken water, kept my bail open, let the fish run with the bait a moment, and set the hook, catching the bass. On too many other occasions, I had bass take the bait in the middle/upper column, only to attempt hooksets unsuccessfully. 

Once, I just dropped the rig and let it sink to bottom about 35 feet down. I let it be for a while, then decided to reel it up. That's when I felt a fish on that didn't feel like one of the bass. More like that slightly uncertain weight of a fluke as it slowly follows along with the pressure you exert. I tried to set the hook but failed. 

Matt and I managed to position at the stern. Generally, that's often the best place to fish, at least according to the conventional wisdom. The current takes your rig more and less directly further back, since the boat is anchored from the bow, although the alignment isn't necessarily perfect, as I'll get to in a moment.  Matt and I held our own there, until after a few hours the current had greatly increased. All the lines ended up back there, and people shouldered their way in, no way to ram rods butts against foreheads to hold our own! At first we successfully resisted others, but the game evolved, becoming a matter of revolving from the left corner of the stern to the right, and starting over. That way, lines--all tending to drift slightly in the direction of that right corner--had their play. 

I gave up on the game. My back hurt and the competition was intense. I tried unsuccessfully to fish towards the bow, and then sat in the cabin for the last minutes before we headed back to the dock. I felt proud of my son who held his own at that game, but really. He's 26 years old and it was a cinch for him.

  

The Port of Long Beach is second only to the Port of Los Angeles, right next door, for the honor of being the largest in the U.S. Here I focus on one cool container ship.

Matt and I managed to position at the stern...at least at first.

Mackerel

 

A Few Striped Bass in Sandy Hook Wash

Got the phone call just before five this morning. Oliver Round was in a Quick Check lot, where his car wouldn't start. We arranged the situation so he would arrive at my house by Uber after he got the car towed through AAA. While we fished later, a new battery got delivered to his house. 

In the meantime, Brenden Kuprel texted me minutes after the call. He was on his way to Sandy Hook. When Oliver and I got there, he had been fishing the Lot A area for going on two hours, having lost one bass and seen some caught. Oliver and I proceeded to Lot B, because Oliver knew it has a bathroom. 

We got to surf's edge to find one of the guys among two or three others had just caught a small bass that must have barely broken the 28-inch size limit. An hour or two later, we saw another caught of about the same size, maybe a little better, and had got word of one getting caught before we had arrived. 

We fished for some four hours. Obviously there were some bass in the surf, all of them having hit in the wash. A strong northeast breeze blew cold, 40-degree air onshore. Low tide I believe was 5:53, which means we did get an hour of fishing rising tide, but for the most part, water was shallow and the waves persistent. Even casting a heavy Krocodile spoon, I couldn't get it over the outer breakers until about halfway through the session, when I cast and cast to fish five or six yards behind those big breakers. I hoped I'd intercept a pod going by and one of the bass would take my offering. 

I also fished a Deadly Dick. I tried a Binsky bladebait on my lighter rod. And I cast an Ava 17 rigged with a teaser.

Oliver gave up throwing lures and tried clam. 

I used to surf fish all the time during the fall with my son. We brought foldout chairs and sort of broke camp by water's edge, holding our rods in surf-spike tubes, watching them intently, usually grabbing hold before one of them got pulled over and dragged towards the wash. 

We did catch a lot of bass. So no interest in the clam Oliver put out dismayed me a little. 

Brenden Kuprel showed up, having walked all the way from Area A. He told me he witnessed six caught, all on the Ava. He was here a week ago. With kids off for the teacher's convention, the lot was full, he told me, fishermen lined up on the beach, catching nothing at all. So at least there were some fish in the surf today. Or had been. By the time I really got involved in casts and retrieves, having had to deal with my black Lab Loki before that, it felt like nothing was there at all.

After I spoke about those years with my son, Oliver said, "Yeah. And if you didn't catch stripers, at least you caught skates." The surf felt all the more dead for none of them being around. The water is still plenty warm. 

On the way over the bridge, Oliver said, "Have you ever been up to Twin Lights?" I saw the lighthouses up on the ridge in front of us. 

"Never have."

"I'm surprised. You're into this kind of thing."

"I just never thought of it, so preoccupied with all else."

We continued driving across the bridge, and I don't remember what was said, but as we neared the other side, I said, "Do you want to go up there?"

Today I climbed to the top of one of the Twin Lights, snapping the two photos from above. 

Brick Beach: Buggy Treading

 

Heavy Northeast Wind Solidity Underfoot

The jetty has a way of returning you to solidity underfoot. It's just that if you take one wrong step, the crevice you fall into will break bones. I've been out there with Fred a number of times now, and every time, I've thought of my job. Yesterday, it bothered me little. Almost not at all. I didn't feel as if my time away from it was too short. 

The interesting thing is, I remember Fred telling me how many days he has to retirement. Each time we fished together, which used to be more frequent when he lived in Bernardsville. I remember that number over a thousand. And then, almost four years ago, it was done, and Fred moved with his wife to the vicinity of Long Beach Island. It seemed to happen so fast, while day to day reality plods along towards my goal as yet.

It's my turn now. And with April coming fast (in some sense, but was is that, really?), soon four years will have passed since I retired. I guess I've reached the point where it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I have to go in in the morning, because so few of them stretch between now and then. Even though it's a matter of some 210 days, which can feel like a lot at any given moment, there's a level in an older person's mind that travels between life events in an instant. It seems impossible to understand how actual time moves fast, when a second remains a second, an hour an hour, but 40 years since when I was 23 doesn't seem very long ago. It could be argued that I'm referring to a superficial level of memory, though, and that if I took the time to really get deep into recollection, vastness would emerge, and with it, a greater sense of time's length. 

Will I fish more, I think so. But between you & me, what matters most is that I keep delivering quality blog posts. I fully intend to keep publishing as much as I do now in magazines, too. 

I thought I'd have the trout book all finished before I would leave work, but that's OK. Haven't touched it in about two years, but I've worked on it since then in my head, so I know the time away is productive. I committed to a big writing project at the beginning of summer I knew would take me away from getting the new website up, but it led me to an even better idea to work on in a year or two or more. A memoir on the absolute need of civilization to have its first principle in nature, and the role of certain individuals who revitalize possibilities by going deep into nature, namely my own role in doing that, having spent 13 years digging clams...unearthing the mind's depths. It is the mind that makes life worth living by linking to possibilities. The liberal persuasion may be the postmodern denial of nature as existing on its own, as if it's a "construction of human society," but nature needs no defense, standing absolutely on its own. It's we who need to recognize its majesty, rather than to imagine we can elevate one of us to that status politically. (What a joke.)

About yesterday, the best part involved my getting an inevitable wind knot in my new PowerPro black slick braid, and having mentioned it to Fred before I would cut that expensive line, his volunteering to untangle it.

"You can't untangle that."

"I can so." 

And a few minutes later, I was fishing the whole length of what's left of it again. I had cut it I think three times during recent outings. 

Again, I got a wind knot. This time, I untangled it. And then once more again, and I untangled it, so I'm confident I can maintain my expensive PowerPro without wasting it.

Wind hauled water out of the Northeast and dumped it on the rocks. After it fell towards low tide, I could finally take my camera out without exposing it to spray, but even then I had to be very careful, as most spots among the rocks were still subject to salty mistiness. 

I fished only Gulp! Jerk Shads on jigs for fluke. Fred tried Fish Bites twister tails and something that looked just like a Jerk Shad. After I caught two fluke, one about 14 inches, another 16, I was told by a couple of guys that the bite was early in the morning when one guy had a four- or five-pounder on the rocks. Fred ended up with one right about 18 inches. We saw one of about 22 inches caught. That spot does get pounded, but so far, we've always caught fluke. 

Fishing the inlet side was difficult with the big swells, heavy tidal current, and spray, but we caught a few tog up to about 12 inches, lots of little seabass. Mole crabs, also called sand fleas. Fred had raked the bait out of the surf. 

Guy's got a short.

Inlet Three Years Ago

 

Danny Barker's Musings of a Legendary Fly Fishing Guide

Got a voice message yesterday from a fisherman from Arkansas, who had lived in Newport News, Virginia, and fished Currituck Sound. He had found my post on Currituck and wanted to talk. 

I phoned him and we hit it off directly. Danny Barker had grown up in West Virginia, where the New River was home water for smallmouth bass; other mountain streams for eastern brook trout. His family relocated to Newport News, where he began fishing the salt of Chesapeake Bay. Naturally, they learned about the northern largemouth bass fishery of Back Bay-Currituck Sound and Albemarle Sound of Virginia and North Carolina. 

We talked about 45 minutes, thoroughly enjoyed. Barker's been guiding in Arkansas, 77 years old, and he's written a book, Musings of a Legendary Fly Fishing Guide. Though it's not published yet, he intends to get it published and advance the proceeds to a children's charity. 

Barker sent me the book in PDF form, and I sat and read through the first 10 chapters, uninterrupted. Twenty-seven chapters in total, the book utterly fascinates me. I can't get over the difference between what seems to me a short time ago--the 1960's and '70's--and the present when it comes to fish populations and fishing pressure on them. Fishing Currituck with his father, the average day amounted to 100 to 200 bass between the two of them, with the best day amounting to about 350. Barker says they weighed between 1/2-pound to 10 pounds, not that a 10-pounder got caught every outing, but on the phone, I queried him on his biggest Currituck bass. Ten pounds is a great fish. He caught an 11-pounder from Albemarle. 

Striped bass fishing in the Chesapeake was phenomenal, too, the Barkers catching as many 200 of them during a single morning. They fished flounder, catching 150 to 300 a day. Big red drum, too.

After jaunting through my reading, I arrived at the Raritan this morning feeling thoroughly dismayed. It's not just what we've done to fish populations. After all, in some ways the Raritan must be comparable to the James and Roanoke Rivers, where the Barkers caught 50 to 100 smallmouths a day as large as seven pounds, but Raritan River bass aren't there in numbers like they must have been only some 60 years ago. At least above Somerville. (There are about a dozen Superfund sites along the lower Raritan.) I think of Stony Brook in Princeton, where I used to catch as many as 40 a day during the 70's. Try Stony now, and the chances are against you catching a single bass. It's not just fishing pressure. Stony never got a whole lot that we ever knew of. Rather than fishing pressure being an all-encompassing evil, consider that ecosystems are delicate. The more New Jersey builds, the more pressure is put on watersheds in forms other than fishing.

I fished this morning...for a single bass. A Raritan smallmouth a little better than 10 inches long caught on a Ned rig. I did hook two other littler ones lost, and missed a hit, but I felt the lack deeply, and I'll add, deeper than I will likely feel it again, thankfully. I'm no different from you. We're used to the fisheries as we have them. Today was a slow one as Raritan outings go, and, in fact, the water was a little off-color. I never do well when it's stained any worse than it was this morning. 

I got out and fished Round Valley in the rain last Thursday, getting skunked. And since I fished only 45 minutes, I felt I had no story to relate on the blog. Flooded undergrowth gave my buzzbait abundant opportunity--45 minutes worth from where I could reach from shore near the main launch--but oddly, there seemed to be no bass among that cover during those favorable weather conditions. 

I leave a link to my popular Currituck post. In addition to Currituck, I refer to canals and "Collington Bay," while said bay is not only a thing of mistaken memory, it's misspelled. The word is "Colington," referring to a certain island and small community. The bay there is strictly named Kitty Hawk Bay. I leave the title as is, so as not to screw up the post in relation to search engines.

Currituck Sound      
 

What is It with Fish Limits?

After a couple of cancellations due to weather, I got to fish Barnegat Inlet with Fred today, seeking that elusive first take-home tog. I caught a 17-incher in June 2022, out of season. Today, my first hookup felt like a really nice fish, which I managed to keep out of the rocks and bring up on the jetty. Measured 16 inches, so it went into the bag. I raised issue with Fred about replacing it with larger later on, and he reminded me that we're allowed one apiece, so it's no problem. I hoped to hook a four- or five-pounder but I was just dreaming.

I hooked some nice fish I lost, but four or five pounds? 

We caught 30 or 40 tog, I'm guessing that's about what it was. A lot of tog. For a species as tightly protected as this one is--but what species isn't anymore, even bluefish are limited to three, while on the freshwater side of rules and regulations you can wipe out a bass pond in a week--I couldn't help but laugh at the government. What do I know? Well, hits from tog on every cast. I know that much. 

Fred had a hell of a day. How can you blame a guy who wants to bring dinner home? And so much better than cashing out at the supermarket. Tog after tog he caught measured 14 inches or better. One of them measured 14 7/8 inches. Seven or eight of  them were 14 1/2 inches. 

Fred's friend Jimmy

Fred's astonishment at measuring a 14 7/8-inch tog.

Inlet

 

No Keepers but a Great Day

This outing's been in the works for many months. When I told Fred I'm really keen on a keeper tog, he listened. And he figured April 18th was the best bet. 

We got to the lighthouse by about 10:30. The wind must have been a steady 30 knots from the southwest. The bay, streaked with white caps, loosened up the hold of brown snot-algae from the rocks, the bottom, whatever else. It got all over our lines, sinkers, swivels, bait. We'd haul up eight pounds of the stuff, and we didn't cast back out for long, though we did walk well out and away from the lighthouse, hoping to find a way to fish in close to the rocks where maybe the stuff got pulled out farther. 

Never happened. 

We tried another spot where inlet becomes more like bay. We got less algae on our lines, but still too much. In any event, no bites.

Besides the green crabs we used hoping to catch tog, Fred had some salted clams. We drove to a spot Fred knows about near the Causeway. Here algae wasn't loose in the water, and we set clams along a channel and on a flat, using three-ounce pyramid sinkers, hoping for stripers. 

Lots of conversation for an hour-and-a-half or so, but no hits. 

I got the bright idea of going back to the inlet. Maybe the incoming tide would be free of algae. 

When we got there, Fred recognized the vehicle of a Friend of his. We found him waiting out the tide with the same idea I had. Fred and I decided to go ahead and fish, even though the tide either continued to drop or the water near the surface moved seaward because of that wind. 

Maybe 40 knots by then. 

And then, after maybe a half hour, maybe less--I can't tell how long, lost my sense of time--the wind all but quit. The water stopped flowing, too. I got a bite. 

I had put my green crab in close on the rocks. I felt it get bit again. Said nothing. Again. And then the strike came and I set the hook. The blackfish I'm photographed with above. 

For maybe a half hour, we got lots of bites, but most of them felt the way I'd expect in water of about 52 degrees. Little taps, non-committal. But the other day, Fred caught blackfish left and right.

Today, I ended up catching another tog, Bigger. About 13 inches, but no keeper. Fred caught two, also under keeper size. 

It seemed that as soon as the fish began feeding in the calm, the wind began to come at us again but from the northeast. And the water flowed as tide began to rise. And the algae got all over our lines once more. And the fish stopped biting. 

Mixed Jetty Catches

 

Mixed Jetty Catches

Fred offered three options: the jetty, his boat, or Raritan River smallmouths. I had to think it over. Then I told him I have yet to catch a keeper-sized blackfish in season. 

Actually, I'm happy I've caught a keeper-sized blackfish at all. I tried for them with green crabs way back in 1982, during September or October when I lived in Surf City and frequented the Barnegat Light Jetty. I never caught one until Fred turned me on to them last year, but I paid only $200.00 a month for the house I lived in that fall.

We mostly caught fluke and black seabass yesterday. In fact, that's all I caught, but Fred also caught little blackfish and two cocktail bluefish on an Ava. I had decided to take a break. I guess only at my age the standing on the jetty rocks for hours at a time wears on you. I sat down in the middle of one of the basalt boulders, because the last thing I wanted to happen--my car keys tumbling out of my pocket and down in-between a couple of those boulders. No, it never happened. Fred had been watching the action at the end of the jetty. Some dude had begun tossing back bluefish every minute. Fred got on them, but by the time I had tied on an Ava and began casting, a couple of boats rudely cut in close and put the blues down. 

When they came back up, they were way out of casting range.

No problem, really. Methinks we make all of our problems up. I stood on a big hunk of basalt and enjoyed the last of my killies. Unlike during the two previous jetty trips with Fred, I fished them on the inlet side, too. (Fred had actually caught a fluke on the inlet side on a Gulp! synthetic.) I found the black seabass liked them, and one of mine was 12 1/2 inches long--a half inch under keeper size and in season. 

One of my fluke was about a half inch under keeper size, too. But Fred kept the two bluefish, which served as a full meal for my wife and I last night. They were delicious. 

When we had hiked out and began loading Fred's SUV, I commented on the dry scales, asking if we could put some water on them. Fred had a much better idea, and I told him, after I had filleted both blues, that his observance of local advantages is spot on. He knows where you can just pull up, get out, and use a cutting board at a bulkhead where you just drop a bucket on a tether and collect bay water. Took care of the scaling problem completely. 

 

Two Fluke Island Beach

I fished for about an hour. My wife and I go to Island Beach State Park with our black Lab, Sadie, twice a year. It's pretty much a lay-out-on-a-towel beach day, but I bring a rod along. Sunday, the surf was too rough to interest me, until it calmed down as you can see in the photo. 

Sometimes there's fluke out there. Sometimes not. Once I caught 12. On Sunday, I caught two. One of them was an eighth of an inch under keeper size; the other a half inch under. I also hooked something really big that I could not stop from running. It finally did stop, though, but when it started pulling again, broke off. Probably a cow-nosed ray. 

There were some others fishing who caught nothing. Bait is important. Fluke love killies. And you have to rig that bait so a bank sinker of manageable weight sits below a short leader leading to, say, a size 2 hook. Beyond that it's wherewithal. Knowing how to catch them isn't an equation in the head. It's a matter of being. We say it's experience, but more than experience, it's a matter of encountering the water in the present, which certainly entails past experience, but is itself freedom.

I know plenty of fluke get caught on Gulp! synthetics, but Sunday there was so much eelgrass in the water, I don't believe trying to jiggle that stuff would have worked. Even the killies got into a mess much of the time, but I was able to keep them swimming freely for the most part. 

Barnegat Inlet Keeper Fluke and Tog

The first thing I noticed was the relative low water level and my ability to see bottom beyond the jetty rocks. Last August, tide was high and there was some water on the rocks. We strapped on Korkers. Yesterday, we had Korkers but never put them on. I wondered about the fluke's willingness in such "shallows," but I couldn't argue with the several or more keepers on stringers, caught by more than several others out there fishing. The fish had been lowered between rocks so you could see stringer lines leading down into brine pools underneath. No one was fishing the inlet side this time. Blackfish (tautog) are out of season, but you can take home triggerfish and sheepshead, though they're much less commonly caught.

Fred had raked a bunch of sand fleas or mole crabs. He tried a spot recommended to him and caught only a small handful there, so we rode on to Loveladies (Long Beach Island) and found them abundant. Fred told me even fluke and stripers are getting caught on them, due to a lack of forage fish in the water. 

Nevertheless, I fulfilled my habit of buying killies. Fred offered me Gulp! to use instead. That's what he's been catching his fluke on, but I like using killies. In August, I bought a pint for $10.00. At the same bait shop, I paid $15.00 for a pint yesterday. (Imagine if wages inflated like that. Well, it's a tough world.)

Casting on the ocean side for fluke, we began hooking up immediately. I felt a little disoriented, as if Fred's Fishbites Gulp! knockoffs should somehow be a little less productive than killies, but he was picking off little fluke left and right. Mine were bigger. The first one was about a half inch under the new 17" legal size. He was more than doubling my count. 

Blackfish weren't quite as abundant as they were in August, but bigger. My 17-incher put up such a fight that, for a long while, I thought I had hooked a 10-pound fish. It didn't take drag the way a hybrid striper does or a Jack Crevalle in Florida. (The less than four-pounder I caught in the Gulf took longer runs than a hybrid of the same size would.) The tog was hard to move. For a maybe somewhat less than three-pound fish, the resistance was powerful. Fred felt it with his 17-incher, too. He also caught a 15-incher and a few others.

Fred's caught tog as big as 4.4 pounds off the rocks, but never dogfish until yesterday. He caught two or three and I caught two. 

In total, Fred caught 21 fluke, no keepers. My total of seven included an 18 1/2-inch keeper. He finally gave the killies a shot when the pint had nearly emptied. He put a killie on one hook, a Gulp! on another, catching five little fluke that way. Not one took the killie. So now there's some evidence that my prejudice in favor of live killiefish is just my preference and not that of the fish, though it leads one to wonder why I caught the bigger. A fish took the very biggest killie of the assortment, too, though I never knew if it was a nice fluke or a shark. Whatever it was felt heavy for a sec.

It's a tough world and I'd rather get on with it than complain. We fished more than five hours, and it wasn't until I became aware of our need to hike out that the heft of the ocean environment began to grow on me. Not in the negative way of breaking through defenses and being something to feel imposing, but of dissolving defenses so I myself merge, enlarge, and awaken to blissfulness. So I felt a little sad, knowing we had to leave, but mostly just ready to stick to the plan, which trumps all else. It was a hell of a hard walk on the beach to Fred's SUV, too, but once we got into that vehicle, I began talking. I had been trying to talk as we walked, but the stress of boots in the dry sand was too much.

There's another side to life. You have to pass through the Great Outdoors to get there.

 

"Crab" Rake

Sand Flea or Mole Crab

Dogfish Shark

Piers