Sturdy Tails Has September

It comes but once a year, those thirty dreamy days of September.  The long-awaited “local’s summer” that welcomes a different face of tourists to the surfcaster’s town.  It’s an all-too-brief, but coveted splash of time, when the angling lunate-lunatic leers and lunges to engage in methods of combat-fishing with anxious heaves of tin and crossed-line retrieves of frenzy at the very sight of those porpoising pelagic fish glazed-over in green backs bursting airborne.  Those targets of piscatorial passion rapidly racing to assault the many hapless Anchovies and Silversides they prey. 

So with it, hardly was wasted a balmy afternoon’s outgoing ebb ripping seaward through The Hook’s Rip for those hard-fighting, but hard-to-hook, hard-tails.  The summertime swimmers whose uncommon names of Fat Albert or Spanish Mack  and even Jack Crevalle are of a celebrity status to the cluster of graphite and fiberglass poles of paparazzi slinging.  Those anxiously repositioning or excitedly aiming, cramming closer among that one lucky reel emptying and singing. 

            This year, with the arrival of an early-season Nor’easter as the thirtieth sunset sets, we may faintly lament, knowing all good things must come to a tail-end.  Twenty-minute barefoot treks in bathing suits through Fisherman’s Trail will soon be waived for waders instead, but with the colorful benefaction of contentment, most must agree that the sturdy tails of September have again treated us well. 

This is a beautiful time of year to celebrate cool, crisp-air nights, dwindling humidity, and free-of-charge, wide-open beach access come daybreak.  With any luck, just one more pelagic will make it up a slope of sand or slide of slimy rock as an autumnal surprise. 

Now, as the first sunrise of October is nearest, the surfcaster is yet furthest from the tale-end of a season..