Merry Christmas to all of my clients, future clients!, friends, followers, and your families. It has been a great year! We started 2012 fly fishing the cold January nights for striped bass, moved to the Upper Delaware for wild browns and rainbows on the best mix of insect hatches you could find, and then back to the Jersey salt in the summer months for blues and fluke, and wrapping up with schoolie stripers on Christmas Day. In between I was able to explore the waters around Newport and Montauk and give that carp craze a go. I hope to meet and see all of you in 2013, may it be a great year for your family, my family and the USA and the World alike.
After waking up and having a great Christmas morning with the girls, my wife, and Father-In-Law I had a quick bite and headed out to sea. The air temps were good at 41, the winds a bit much at 18-23, but it was from the NW so I thought the inshore waters would be nice and flat. Today I had my timing all wrong. Wind against tide had whitecaps on the Sandy Hook Bay, and halfway out I just decided I didn't want to be "that guy" today. I was out solo so I was disappointing anyone but myself. After a quick trip back to the ramp, and then a bath for the boat, I decided to give the rocks a shot.
The waters were green, clean, and flat. I was ill-equipped, as I left my stripping basket back at the ranch. The NW wind was probably around 18- with some gusts that pushed it a little harder. So casting would be okay, but line management on the rocks would be a challenge. I had on a Joe Phiefer fly and I stayed with it. After parking my truck and boat on a side street in Deal I took the walk down. I found flat rocks out along the groin where I could try and strip my line onto. After a few casts I had my first striper, with five more to 22" to finish the six-pack. These fish are the smaller fish we had about three weeks ago before some bigger fish we had on the boat and beach before the blow last week.
Today looked pretty good, and maybe tomorrow, then it looks like winter will be landing. If the water temps stay down and the sand eels arrive or the herring stays, we may have bass into next year.
