I'll get to this later, first a little about the last two days....
Back from Wildwood Crest where it was beautiful for the two quick days we were down there. Beaches were super clean and the sand off white and fine. Seapoint Village is gorgeous and a perfect family place if you can swing it. Now, the Wildwood Boardwalk wasn't what I remembered, not only as a kid, but from last year. Bad T-Shirt place after bad T-Shirt place with audio loops of foriegn salesman telling lies of the prices of the shirts they sell. "Everything 10 dollars", then you go in and what you want is 15 dollars. Couple that with games where you can never win, yet along the kids. I did win a big stuffed animal at the water cannon booth, narrowly beating out a few 6 year olds for a choice size prize. But, the stuffed animals these days are highly flammable, toxic, and abrasive when you cuddle with them, and, our seam ripped so all the styrofoam balls fell out.
BUT, the highlight of the two days for me, besides being with the kids (yada yada), was dinner last night at The Crabhouse Seafood Restaurant at Two Mile Landing. We had the perfect night for dinner there outside with a one man band playing as the sun set. We waited just over an hour to get our party of 10 seated, but then my daughter and I put the beating on All-You-Can-Eat blueclaws on spread out brown paper with mallets in hand. There was something for everyone on the menu and a beer, some live music, tons of crabs, and family was a great way to end a few days in Wildwood Crest.
Now back to today....
This morning I had a bunch of business stuff to do and fielded a ton of phone calls from solicitors from online fishing magazines and websites wanting me to advertise with them.....I guess my info was pimped out by someone on one of those dreaded lists. After all that I decided to run down to Deal to catch the outgoing tide for a little bit. As I was parking I noticed a large number of SUVs with surfboards on top pulling into the street and kids getting dropped off by their parents. Not 1or 2, but more like 20 or 30. I tied up a new leader and picked a fly that would hopefully seduce a keeper fluke into biting. I made my way onto the rocks and looked over and wondered if someone was running a surfing camp for kids. They had some tents set up and the kids were broke up into groups with several instructors on shore and in the water. Now this is a public beach, and we're all trying to enjoy the resource, and, we all like to see kids getting out and learning new things, BUT, at what point does it interrupt someone elses space and ability to enjoy the resource themselves? I watched as a lady had to walk down the beach to an area where there were no surfers or instructors, BUT, that was exactly where I had been casting! Just see the below picture....
I wonder how it would fly if I lined up 20-30 kids of the same age and put fly rods in their hands and had them give it a go like we did last week at the Bill Canfield Youth Fly Fishing Camp?
Today I watched as pod after pod of bunker headed south into the wind. Every now and then a bluefish would run through them but they never got in range. Had a bump on the Clouser on the bottom but that was it for my 30 minute outing.
