"I'm just waiting for the call...". Those were the words coming from a guy as I made my way across the boardwalk after fishing my first stop for the day. He prefaced it with, "I got guys", meaning he was one of the northern scouts and there were guys down south. It was the cell phone fishing club in full effect. Before he left he let me know, "We had them good from Belmar and south yesterday. My buddy got two 45's (inches)".
So I was hopeful, although I didn't know if I went in the right direction off 195. I had to pull the trigger, continue east to Route 18 and beaches north, continue east to towards Belmar, or hit Route 34 and head down into Ocean County. Like a magnet I was just drawn north.
I got to Deal at 445 and shook off the cobwebs and set up my rod. Luckily I had just about everything I needed right where I had left it. I went through the flies and went with a, larger then it looks, Slider thinking there was adult bunker around. It would fun to see a fish blow up on topwater as the first light arrived, although the full moon had wings pretty lit up.
While there were sand eels off the beaches last week I haven't heard that as much but many boats and shore based anglers are jigging or throwing Ava's. There's been a mix of peanuts, mediums, and adult bunker on and off the beaches. To everyone's surprise some type of mackerel showed up and was chasing small bait in the shallows which brought the bass in on the hunt.
I had a banner day at work Tuesday in the hospital. The students and I were on a new unit and they knocked it out of the park, so I was all jazzed up. I have burnt enough lead paint off the outside of the house that my brain is probably swollen so I needed a day off from that. I had low expectations, but was hopeful, that at some point I'd find a fish or two.
I used Deal as a place to get ready, then fished in the dark, and chilly, Long Branch until first light, and then, after a good bagel in Long Branch (FiNagle the Bagel, cash only, near Caputo's) I did the circuit. I didn't see any bait or much for birds in my first three stops. At each one I got excited making my way to the view of the water with binoculars in hand. Only to let down by no signs of life.
At each stop it was kind of ho-hum water to look at. There wasn't even any boats out front on the Sandy Hook to Sea Bright beat. I parked below the entrance to The Hook and held court with two regulars I've seen over the years. "I could happen at any minute". There was some bunker out a ways but nothing was on them. It was an hour of watching and waiting I'd never get back.
By 8 o'clock my feelings of hope to skunk was starting to build. Leif was out in Deal giving it a shot and we talked by phone as I sat in my truck. He had some bunker out a bit and there was no action there for the few guys that were out. As I sat there I took a look at Facebook to see if those early morning posts were telling the story of any early bites down south. Not that I was going, I just wanted to see if I made the wrong north vs south choice. They had them, but I'm not sure if they were even fly rod fish.
As I scrolled through as my "Friends" posts were sprinkled in between the annoying feeds and ads. One popped up from Eric Kerber's "On a Mission Fishing". It was a solid morning from them close to the beach and I couldn't help but notice the background. I swear I wasn't looking for it,
but that church, the red one, jumped out at me. I was only a short drive away, and was heading south and home anyway, so I made my way there. When I pulled up to one of those dead end streets I was met by a guy who said, "They have fish", pointing to some guys on the beach. Not wanting to chase other guys I drove a bit south and walked in.
There were a few boats in close and guys on the groin tips casting 1/4 mile out. It wasn't blitz fishing but it was the best sign of life I had seen with bass, probably three of them, running through the peanut bunker pods that were off the beach. It was a beautiful day to just be out there but it was frustrating as well. If you don't have the bait in front of you then you don't have the bass. It's that simple during the fall. You can forget about fishing the structure, well there isn't much of that these days, well actually, the beaches look good following the recent blows, and the tides and moons. It's bass on bait, that's pretty much it.
I just settled in and walked the beach and made casts knowing they could push in "...at any minute", or not. As I made my way up on the rocks I said to myself, and something I've put into writing many times, "Just because you hear the studs doesn't mean you won't slip". And on the next step I did. I caught that stick of butter laying on top of a relatively flat rock and went down hard. First it was on my right knee, then my stripping basket, which nearly displaced my diaphragm, and then face down into between the rocks. My 9 ft 10 wt Helios D was bent along my face and I was stuck. Kind of like a turtle on it's back. You know when you get old and you fall you just wait to realize what you injured as you lay there, that's how I felt. But I was good, a little throbbing in the knee, thank God for the knee pads in the Orvis PRO waders, and a little tweak in the back, but good.
I told Leif where I was and he came up for a visit. He caught the below pic of me as I gingerly made my way off the rocks. I calculated each step like it was my last and at one point my mind said step but my foot wouldn't budge. What a goofball. Getting old sucks.
Leif and I talked for a bit as we walked out. The day was done. What started out beautiful with a nice west wind went to shit with a building SW wind. I told him I was going to head south down to the Shark River Inlet before making the right turn and hitting 195.
I stopped in Bradley Beach and got geared up and walked in. There were some birds, and bunker, in and around the groin tips. The boats were heading south and in as the wind started to pick up. I was joined on the groin by another angler who had fished the morning there without a tap. All of a sudden we started to see the bunker pods split and move when the sun poked through and lit up the flat. I say flat, but really all it was was all the sand that pulled off the beach during the recent storms. There's a window now, balancing between water and no water in the places between each groin.
We had two pods in front of us, small ones, one that was making its way to the beach and the other peeling off into the deeper water. The one got nervous looking and that's when, at least visually, the best part of the day happened. The one pod split into two, and there were bass on them, one heading to the beach the other out aways.
We were trying to calculate which way they were pushing them. Would they hit the beach? Or would they push them up into the pocket on the north side where we were standing? My fellow angler threw a Spook at them as I took a couple of steps towards the beach end of the groin. But after a few steps, and 1-2 minutes, it was all over. They were gone. She split after that while I stayed about a half and hour watching and waiting. I called it a day and was home just before noon.
I'm glad I forced myself to go even though I chose the wrong turn off 195 in the early morning. The winds are going to crank from the SW, S, and then NW for the next few days.
Surely one of them will shit up the water along the beach creating that off-color line which keeps the bait and bass out of casting range, for fly rodders for sure. After this, and this Beaver Moon, the tides go low at first and last light, and then a short time after it's Thanksgiving week, which is always a hot time along the Jersey Shore.
I'm thinking I got 3-4 trips in me before wrapping it up for the year. And it's been a good year so far.