10.06.13 Early bird gets the...sand eel...and a nice morning of intro to saltwater flyfishing

     It glistened like a diamond on the beach, even at 4 am. Luckily I got there before the birds had woke up and started scouring the beach for food. I found this nice sand eel as I walked down to the water. We've been waiting for some new bait to show up since the mullet have came and went for the most part. Even though it's a little early for ammodytes americanus we'll take them.

      With a scheduled trip pushed back a few hours it was a green light to fish by myself. As light arrived a few bass were thrilled with the black sand eel fly and swirled on it before biting down. These were 24 inch footballs that bit and fought bigger than their size. Soon it was time to get to work.

     David took a break from his busy medical school schedule to come taste fly fishing the Jersey Shore saltwater. He's a great caster and experienced trout fisherman and he enjoyed seeing, learning, and "doing" fishing the beaches and groins. We fished about four hours of the outgoing near new moon tide jumping from beach to rocks and town to town. The highlight was casting to a big tailing bluefish off the front of the groin.

With some new bait around, and the word of the boat bite starting to heat up it should be an interesting transitional week. We'll come off a new moon and have a little cold front and some weather to go along with these new arrivals.

My early prediction - sand eels, sand eels, sand eels. They'll be early and they'll be here in big numbers.