The above photo was one I took back in 2010. At that time I hadn't met Charlie Shapiro yet but he is a beast when it comes to fly fishing. Beach, boat, it doesn't matter, he's just fishy. These days Charlie calls Florida home but when he was here he knew all the spots and pretty much caught all, well a lot, of the fish. While that pic is pretty cool, if you know where he is just by that frame then you know how much the Jersey Shore, and really the Monmouth County beaches, have changed. Many of the "kids" we see on the beaches today don't remember and never experienced "Jetty Country" as the old timers did. Hey, even I am new to this game, not really hitting the Jersey Shore, where I grew up, until 2008.
Over the years and on this blog I have written thousands of posts and in order to feed the blog I have posted thousands of pictures. In order to do that I had to take, say tens of thousands of images, only picking the best to go along with the blog posts. That leaves my hard drives packed with images that are
probably more of an interest and valuable today then they were back in the day. And that's because of the changes we have seen to the beaches and groins we loved to fish. That was way before the big storms like Sandy and the repeated rounds of beach replenishment destroyed the marine ecosystem.
My hard drives are organized by year, and then date, with each day having a six letter abbreviation of the days images. So if you look above at 042910 and WBRNCH it's probably images from fishing the West Branch of the Delaware. If I open that date I break the images down into RAW, SELECTS, and then TRANS. Once the SELECTS have been "developed" they go into the TRANS folder before they
are published on the blog. I know you don't care, but it is a tremendous amount of work to pen this blog. One, you have to go somewhere, you have to fish or whatever and take pictures during the entire outing, then go home and edit and post. Some blog posts take hours. Some are good and others not so much. But the hidden gems, today, are in the RAW folders. Images that were taken for granted at the time because they weren't news, we saw those places everyday, so no big deal. But if I asked you, or showed you an image from the old, but to me new at the time, 8th Ave groin in Asbury Park, would you know or remember what it looked like? The parking lot. The flume into Deal Lake. The outflow. The pocket. And the cast of characters, both anglers, and depending on what time of day, and non-angling men seekers looking to hook up, that used to frequent there. Below is an 8th Avenue image taken on November 29, 2009.
So during the past year I have had to go through the hard drives to find images for magazine and book editors alike. It was then I realized the hidden gems that I had. But enough about that. So while the image of Charlie is cool up on top, the other RAW images tell a better picture of good days past.
That my friends is Monmouth Beach. (Click on the images to enlarge). MB before the surf cams. Before most anglers had and used cell phones of any quality to capture images, or called the army into a bite. Look at the pocket then and how the beach was all the way up to Sea Bright. On a big tide in big water you could fish the pocket from the wall.
Then beach replenishment started and it was over. And now that process is repeating all over again. They are hitting Monmouth Beach and working their way down into Long Branch, skipping a beach or
two along the way. I don't know if they do that by design or try and just blend the destruction in here and there as to not sound and alarm. These days anglers fish the long stretches of beach and think it's great when the
tip of a groin starts to show but they have no idea how long they truly are and the water they used to hold in the pockets. While you have may enjoyed your blitz on the open beach, like they did near Garfield a few weeks back, that stretch used to be a prime, prime mix of rocks and bowls that held water even on lower tides. They would hold and trap baitfish attracting predator fish all the time, not just during blitzes, which is what striped bass fishing, especially in the fall, has become.
There are Ocean County anglers. There are Monmouth County anglers. Then there are any port in a storm anglers. They go where the bite is hot. There has always been an underground "cell phone" network, but not like it exists today. Technology, and intel, and "friends" have changed the game and the need to feed that instant gratification, needing to catch, photo and post, so CPP rather than CPR, catch, photo and release. And that goes from the causal angler to the for hire six packers to the head boats.
But anyway. Moving south a bit. More on Monmouth Beach. Groins, like the one above, are, or were, fantastic. They shoaled up during certain months on one side while holding a pocket on the other. The littoral current always moves from south to north in New Jersey so things change, as Mother Nature intended them to. Our problem is Frank Pallone, the "fishermen's friend", and the ACOE (Army Corp of Engineers), constantly F with her, making her very angry. Just let things alone and and we'd all be better for it, and the fishing would be better as well.
But all of those tall buildings have residents. Residents with a vote. Residents who care more about sand in front of their buildings than striped bass. So, Frankie makes them happy and acquires monies, this time $29 million to "replenish" the, well their beaches. You know that shitty silty mucky sandy stuff you're hitting in the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers as of late, it's coming to a "new" beach for you to lay on
during summer 2024. And those off shore "donation" sites? They suck as well. The sand and rocks belong on the ocean floor. When you pump them onto the beach they stratify and don't pack well. The beaches become a constant give and take just ebbing and flowing back into the ocean, and eventually making the way up to the False Hook, where, hey, it had to be dredged again this fall, duh?
So back to Monmouth Beach. You'll never see the below scenes again. But what you will see are the images that follow after a round of heavy sand pumping that took place a few years ago. We can see
what happens when the last truck pulls the last pipe off the beach. Beautiful....check please. But then as the tides ebb and flow so does the sand. Imagine being a nice well-to-to older retired couple who call
Monmouth Beach home and decide to take an early first light walk along the beach. How would the wife who suffers from osteoporosis and lupus do if she does a Triple Lindy off the cliff that is now the new beach? I don't think too well, and I don't think Frankie or the Government will foot that bill.
So from time to time I'll do some digging and reach back into the vault and find some treasures from the past. In the meantime realize how much of a fish-fisherman you have become, either from the boat or the beach. If you don't see them then they must not be there. If you don't get a call over then there's no fish. That's all way different then the way we used to fish, and that's not all that long ago, when you thought like a fish, and knew the beach and structure like a fish, and didn't rely on electronics and technology to do your homework for you. We didn't used to drive to fish like we do today. Honestly, for years I remember never have to leave that Phillips to 8th Avenue stretch. You just didn't need to, you knew you were going to catch, something, eventually. That's why beach "nourishment" sucks.
