I recently saw these pics on a Facebook site called All About Sea Bright. The photos were posted by Rich Tagliaferro. Above shows the seawall in the area of Via Ripa, a familiar stop for anglers looking for striped bass, especially during the fall bait runs of mullet and peanut bunker. I don't remember
fishing off the seawall from Monmouth Beach up to Sandy Hook but guys tell me on a big tide and in snotty weather the bass and blues would push the bait up to the rocks. They say the seawall has saved towns along it from sure destruction during big storms throughout the years most notably Sandy in
2012. People question if breaches in North Sea Bright and Mantoloking should have been made into channels to improve the quality of the Shrewsbury and Navesink Rivers and the Sandy Hook bay to the north and the Manasquan River and Barnegat Bay to the south. In my time beach replenishment has made the seawalls and the stairs that lead up and over it a stop to scout and have access to the wide
beaches that now ebb and flow with the current, tides, weather, and beach replenishment. The closest I got to fishing off the seawall was at Big Monmouth about 12 years ago. Before beach replenishment, which has really killed the sea life environment along the Jersey Shore, water used to hit the seawall in Monmouth Beach and "the pocket" was a great place to fly fish for striped bass. One day I found Charlie
Shapiro working the pocket on a dropping tide. That area has been changed forever when the first big rounds of beach replenishment started. Below are some Big Monmouth images after some large scale
pumping occurred. Little Monmouth also changed forever, although now and again we see it coming back, only to be covered up again. In 2013 they really did a number on that area and those pockets
where predator and prey would meet. While new to the game guys like me refer to fishing off the rocks as the jetties and groins, old school anglers remember the days of the rocks meaning the sea walls in Sea
Bright, Monmouth Beach, Long Branch, Deal and Allenhurst. Above was an old favorite place for the Phillips Avenue Gang to fish each morning. Me, Leif, Richie, Al, Bob, Andy, and Bucktail Jimmy would work the stretch between Whitehall down to Roseld depending on the tides and weather. That's Jack Denny above coming out of the water just north of the pocket at Roseld with 'The Hump" in the near distance. So many good times there. It just goes to show the power that images have in helping us remember the way things were and good times, and fishing, had.