It seemed most anglers, fly rodders included, were rewarded with that New Year's Day bass if they ventured out. Today was my first and it was nice enough although a tad cold at first light. Last night I tied up a couple of sand eel flies and was hoping to find one fish just to get 2024 started off right.
The ocean temp is holding around 47 degrees and that's not bad for this time of year. I'm not sure what's this weekend's storm and snow will do to that. I started on the sand blind casting my way up and
down looking for some current or troughs on the incoming tide. The beaches have changed since I was here last week. The consistent wave action at the same elevation has created height differences on the
scarp leading down to the trough. The groins just didn't fish well overall although two of them had deeper water on the north side. This time of year when the presentation is very low and slow fishing
from the rocks can be disastrous because you can donate your fly line and flies to the hazards that exist just below the surface. The problem is I just love the groins so I stayed longer than I should have and luckily didn't lose anything. When the sun
came up there was good cloud cover so I thought any first light bite, that I must have missed, may be extended a bit. Above you can see the groins coming back as the nourished beaches start it move the sand back out into the ocean.
I walked about as far as I ever have and made stops every so often and worked the two-fly setup on more stops than others. At one point I made a cast along an outflow pipe and had a hit, then another on the same retrieve. As I was about to make another cast I remembered that there were two pipes in this spot and I must have got caught up on the one that sat a bit lower. I wasn't going to fall for that again.
It was ending the flood tide so whatever water I had was going to be about it. You can see below how the beach is now not just a sloping pitch down into the water. I fished the highs and lows without a tap.
I approached another outflow pipe and set up to make a cast alongside it. It was a good cast that found the second pipe that sat lower in the water. There was no getting my leader and flies back so I broke it all off. I had my pipes mixed up. The earlier one was s single, this one was the double. I then contemplated walking back to the other one to get that fish that was just waiting for some flies to eat. But I passed on that. I had already walked plenty.
I hit the rocks again and there was super gin clear water in there and no one home. If they were there I could have sight fished for them. With office work that needed to be done I felt the morning coming to
an end. I wished I brought one to hand, not like it really means anything, but somehow it just does. It's more like a right of passage, getting that first one of the year, not matter how small it is. Some of the fish my friends have caught are keeper sized so you just never know. I made a stop over at Bagel
Talk and they are back to their old routine of not carrying white milk. While I don't mind an OJ every now and then I just prefer that cold milk, as long as it's not the end of it's shelf life.....yuk. Before I headed home I made a few stops just in case but there was nothing for me just as the tide flipped to the ebb. The 2024 season is here and now I'm 0-1. This year I may actually keep a log of trips vs skunks vs days that I catch. It would be interesting to tally up a years worth of bass, something I have started but never completed. Some guys do and the numbers are high, like into the hundreds.
