It's not my first time looking at the eye-in-the-sky cams along the Jersey Shore. But hopefully it's my last. What have we become as anglers? What has fishing become? Why, why, why?
I was up at 245 am. I don't know what's going on with me the last month or so but by 8 pm I'm pretty much done and ready for bed and up at around 3 am and ready to go. Maybe it's a combination of early work and fishing this time of year. Maybe I'm just getting old. But on those days where I want to sleep in it sucks.
Yesterday the fish got a break from the boat traffic due to the weather. Thank You Jesus. You know this social media thing is funny. You try and avoid it but it just sucks you in. I have a Facebook account that I post on from time to time. I really like Facebook Marketplace and have probably moved over $50,000 worth of stuff in the past five years. But a quick click on it, and, depending on the time of year, you get pounded with pics from your "Friends" and general posters alike. So this time of year it's fish pictures of angler's holding mostly large striped bass, incorrectly. I don't know what Instagram or other platforms are like. Facebook seems to be the old persons social media place these days.
So I'm up and debating should I go. It's Saturday. It's the fall. Theresa is off. Maybe we do something seasonal or maybe do something constructive around the house. Winters coming and so is the 58 degree ambient temperature in our big old house. We still have to shut down our place in Cape May for the winter. In the end I decided to forgo the ride and half a day it would take to fish for a couple of hours. I checked some emails and surfed around before saying to myself "Hey, let me see what it looks like down there". That would be done to check with myself to see if I made the right decision. What? Right decision? What does that even mean?
What that means is, since I chose not to go, would I kick myself in the face because after a quick glance down from a high perch I could see people fishing, birds flying, and bass blowing up. That, my friends, is a loser move. Basically what we are doing is armchair fishing. If we are close, and aren't a member of the Cell Phone Fishing Club, a quick log-on will determine if you run to go fishing. Now, yes, this time of year tends to be all-or-none, like in-front-of-you-or-not, but c'mon man. What it is is we would allow a live streamed video to determine our next move, and even, lead us to be in a good or bad mental state for the rest of the day.
Let's say you're in a good mood. You work a town or two off the beach down in Ocean County. You brought bagels into to work. You got some checks. Your employees are friendly. All good. And you're a fisherman. You have appointments that you can't miss later in the day. While having a nice chicken cutlet with wet mozzarella and mayo, lettuce and balsamic sandwich, you flip on the local beach cam. To your horror the bass are on the beach in pretty much a straight line east down from where you are sitting. There is one guy there and no boats in sight.
But you can't leave. In the deepest parts of your brain your neurotransmitters start to get cross-wired. Soon you are in a bad mood. The fish you have been waiting for have shown up on the wrong tide during the wrong time of day. You can't stop thinking about it all day and you seem to be seething when your appointments arrive. On your way home you take a quick drive past the barren beach. When you roll up to the crib your wife and kids are standing there waiting to greet your miserable-ass self.
I tend to pick on boats and boat fishing here and there. Striped bass fishing and boats, outside of skinny water sight fishing, is, well, tends to be slightly easier than walk and wade fishing. You're in a boat and see 500 other boats with birds flying around, guess what, something is going on. So you ride over the water is boiling and you take a peak down at your fish finder with side view and you drop the spot lock down and your on the numbers. That, easy, not really, but sometimes it is.
As walk and wade, or surfcasters, we have our own cheat codes. We have the cell phone network. We have social media for the report chasers. We have beach cams. We have weather and wind apps. We have all that we need to rely on to either keep us from, make us go, or have deep regrets either way. That's sad. Fishing has involved too much calculating these days. The only thing you should really calculate is if and when you can go. Period. That's how most people, can, and will, fish. Yes, if you're dialed in, you can look at moons, tides, wind and weather to help you understand and possibly increase your chance of catching. But in the end you just got to go.
Imagine that we take the beach cams and install them along the Upper Delaware. They zoom in and out like the ones we have along the Jersey Shore. You could see the conditions. Things like water levels, effect of the weather and the wind, if there's people in that spot - either on foot or in the drift boats, and you can most importantly see if the fish are up? Wow. Wouldn't that be cool. You could sit in a dark bar up the street or in your mother's basement and "fish" all day long. And then when that 20" brown starts to bank sip you can jump in your car and speed down to feed it that size 16 Sulfur emerger it's keyed in on.
As you pull along the side of the road to your horror two other anglers have beat you there. They too have been tuned in to the Hancock River Cam, one from the real estate office in town, and the other from the cheap motel along Route 17. Since you're the third guy there you turn in disgust and drive home. Once in the door you hear mommies voice, "How was fishing?". Pissed off you snarkedly say, "Mom I wasn't fishing I was gone for 10 minutes". "Okay honey", she says, adding, "I'll bring you down some dinner in a little bit".
I wish there was some way we could return the good old days. They history repeats itself. How do we go back in time and reverse what all this technology has ruined, or dampened, in our lives, including the fun of physically fishing.
