Well Chris went and picked the "perfect" day to shoot the pictures for the jetty story we are doing for Eastern Fly Fishing magazine. Of course it's not his fault, I thought we'd get a good shot this morning before the rain came in tonight. Well, we were both wrong. Gale force winds from the east made todays shoot a little more difficult, and wetter, then we anticipated. We met up in Red Bank at 9:30 and stopped at my favorite bagel haunt, and now maybe Chris', The Bagel Oven on Monmouth Street. Things seemed fine weather wise in town but as we traveled down Ocean is was clear that the nasty weather had already moved in. We first stopped in Elberon and parked on Park Ave and took the walk along the beach access path down to the water. I thought that would be a good location to shoot because there is a large "T" jetty that runs behind the beach club. The first thing we noticed after the high winds were two guys throwing bait at one of the jetties north of where we were setting up. They were out a ways were taking a bath from the wind and high tides. There were no birds around and we couldn't see any first working. Every now and then a bird would come down and grab some bait but that was it.
We started out shooting some tight shots before Chris ventured out to the end of the jetty. I set up on the beach and shot him with the 200 and 300 mm lens. As Chris was casting I could see the big waves behind him coming in and then crash behind him and cover him with cold sea water. We stayed there about an hour and then headed down to Deal. There was more of the same there. I was able to shoot him from the pier which sits above the jetty behind the beach club. While we were there a couple guys would come, park, and take a look. One guy traveled up from Bayhead hitting all the beaches trying to find fish. After another hour and some more tight shots we packed it in. I think we got about 6-8 good looks for the editors to play with.
Before, during, and after the shoot I pulled out my audio recorder and collected our conversations about the shoot for The Average Anglers' first PODCAST, which may or may not come anytime soon. I am in the process of trying to figure out how to get one going.