Attention Anglers 2020

It’s as if the “unsinkable” year of 2020, while steaming forward of its steadfast wake, one left over a decade wide in advancing untold economic growth and personal prosperities, suddenly collided course with an unseen obstacle, shuddering the lives of billions as this vessel of everyday innocence suddenly and ominously halted way, and if not in some manner immediately, slowly yet surely, began listing.  And while this hazard was not nearly as recognizable as the perceivable threat of a mountainous iceberg to the approach of a ship underway, to an absolute contrary, some undetectable body in the form of a microscopic virus jeopardizes to capsize the health and well-being of humanity just the same.  Lives are suddenly, and literally, at stake in this overwhelming current of distress. 

Global infection of individuals has surpassed 1.38-million positive cases, with nearly 380,000 in the U.S. and as of this writing, 2,545 in Monmouth County, NJ (my county of residence).  As such, The NJ Fish & Game website, out of an “abundance of caution” (the COVID-19 catch-phrase in advocating sound public policy) has linked to their homepage a social distancing advisory poster seen below.  Clearly, there exists no stretch of open beach, or edge of pond, however distant or remote, where the proximity (within 6-ft?) of a neighboring angler makes such remoteness of outdoor sporting destination any less uncertain of viral risk than grasping a retail business's door handle or supermarket's shopping basket during these unprecedented times of pandemic the world, and likely your hometown, is at once plagued.  With no therapeutics to alleviate ailments of infection, or a vaccination to prevent infection, government has made it abundantly-clear as to their intentions in mitigating the spread of this coronavirus – steering clear of others.  Everywhere. 

Let’s all hope for the best.

April 3, 2020 - "Consistent with Governor Murphy's orders that all New Jerseyans practice social distancing in order to limit the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19), anglers must fish alone or with immediate family members and cannot fish in groups of any size (no matter how small), either on land or by boat. A minimum six-foot social distance between anglers must be maintained at all times.  Anglers MUST NOT congregate in parking areas, boat ramps or at popular fishing locations. Conservation Police Officers, New Jersey State Park Police, and DEP staff are actively monitoring our parks and natural areas to ensure that individuals enjoying our natural resources are maintaining social distance. Any groups encountered will be instructed to disperse to maintain social distance, and if they do not comply, tickets will be issued by law enforcement."

2020 NJ recreational minimum size, possession limits and seasons.  Take note: Striped Bass regulation is 1-fish per angler, measured 28" to less than 38".  Bluefish harvesting for the private/shore angler has been reduced (FINALLY) to 3-fish, no minimum size.  

Exposures - October & November 2019

Then it happened, again.  The celebration of a summer-season, softened of sun-worshiped languor and sultry lengths of leisure that stretch even further into the welcomed weeks of a locals-summer September, came to pass.  Surrendered some-day were sun-bleached Tommy Bahama backpack chairs and beach blankets, scented of saltwater and sunblock smear, the loose folds of which still exfoliated sand at their shaking, set aside save the faraway return of an equinox – the antipode, spring.  And again, at some nebulous point of passage amid this recession of season, it happened all over again.

The stillness of time shuffled before any apparent noticing.  Only in hindsight, did the animation of some growing promise come drawn to life, like motion perceived in a fingered flipbook, enabling this surfcaster’s months-long spell of déjà vu to endure at all.  The fall run was coming.  As with the turning of our calendars from the days balmy of September to the weeks windy of October and then someday advancing to the mornings frosty of November, so again began the turning-on of finned-life of all-forms all-throughout the reaching spill and rushing call of the surf.  Day-by-sun-setting-shorter-day, leaf-by-wind-driven-falling-yellowed-leaf, did the spirited avocation of a reciprocating coastal ritual of this beachgoer casually, if not one day quite suddenly, sprint forth to commence.  After all, the fall run had arrived.  Fin-ally.

The orchestration of its ethereal, counting-down-the-time-all-summer-long fanaticism ensures at inspiring of preparation and infesting of thought the churning mind of any devout wanderer of the surf.  Tide charts are highlighted of opportune dawn and twilight dates of flooding, and the moon’s various phases noted of appeared waxing and waning.  The weather is watched twice-daily, while ears are held closer to the running rail of rumor.  The elemental look and feel of Nature advance of washed color and bleak rawness.  The ticking clockwork of temperature, of water and air, trigger back-bays and tidal rivers to empty of anchovy, silverside, mullet, shad, and peanut bunker, kick-starting in earnest the grand prix of finned races southward.  Out back, larger linesiders, typically absent of summer’s shallow, bathwater-warm tides, suddenly reappear to stalk prey within the nighttime draws of tidally-risen ink.  Out front, with any luck of sighting, patrolling schools of False Albacore will shear with mouths agape through a shimmering skin of the morning tide’s surface, colliding with this egress of southern-swimming bait.  Cocktail Bluefish routinely blitz the shoreline, while Bonito, Spanish Mackerel, or even juvenile Crevalle Jack make for a surprise pelagic beaching.  Squawking gulls and terns fish-find from above in swirling flocks, dive-bombing into sightings of baitfish.  The backs to passing pods of dolphin and the occasional whale sneak open the inshore amphitheater’s rippled curtain with spraying blows of breath.  The long-light of sun-setting shadow sharpens and our quarry's life-blood of brine slowly sheds of temperature, as this web of migrating sea-life weaves together before our witnessing wonderment of participation as sand-straddling observers.     

The following images speak for those few occasions I "developed" in a digital darkroom exposing pixels pointed and focused of a salty-inspired experience.  Cataloged are select moments of my October and November outings.  Nights as the sole attendee of audience listening to the orchestrated bug-music of riverside field crickets.  Or to Orion rising radially over the eastern horizon amid the lure of a stargazing stare glinting higher.  At other times to the forceful hiss of surf racing over wader boots leaking and legs sodden as the stinging plea of numb fingertips implore just how much more of this madness?  Of footprints stippled below a wrack line's serrated shape of debris and shells, laid furthest from any reaching wash of incandescent light, at some place dissolving to the watery witness of a breathing tide's overlapping reclamation unseen under darkest of starless night.

Missing are the iridescent colors of silky-smooth, lunate-tailed visitors and striped, long-lengths of large, migrating matriarchal tribe members.  Yet the serial continuation of those engagements of experience, oft evidenced of expectation and exception, live reeling in the mind, cast of prior reward.  As the surfcaster's bounteous mainland tale of beached tail in having obeyed time and place and season and reason.  As a single participant fiddling before the unfolding of a fall run.  As a timekeeper of our quarry's whereabouts, armed with the trust and loyalty of a single graphite night-stick, possessed by a mild understanding of the very clockwork intrinsically and instinctively weaved of Nature herself.

With an appetite whetted in recent years by the unrivaled power professed of the False Albacore's drag-screaming escape or even the exhilaration incited of its sudden surface breaches, I ensured in readying the pouch of my September surf bag with a few select fluorocarbon leaders, in so far as tying one dropper-looped with a Scott Stryker Bay Anchovy fly.  I figured, you never may know.  This once-a-year treat of a fishery only lasts for a brief number of weeks, at best.  Alas, when stricken with consistently foul weekend weather, adverse winds, excessively rough or stained-colored surf, and lack of sightings or reports thereof, the white-knuckle, explosive strike of a 2019 Albie never (unfortunately) materialized in having afforded this particular surfcaster the opportunity of thrillingly sliding a hard-tailed greenback onto wet, bubbling sand.  Just when I grew spoiled by intercepting the predatory prowess of their clock-like feeding habits learned of the same sandy locale only seasons prior...   

Peanuts by the millions schooled the local river systems throughout the summer, staging for the tidal movements of October's new moon that would encourage the bait to begin the swim around to the oceanfront, instinctively migrating southward, and perhaps colliding with schools of Stripers pressing them upon the beach, between breaking wave sets that the surfcaster excitedly lunges lures within while on his chase from sand.  

Only five casts made into the night, yet four fish rushed to answer...

An uncommon October catch for me was this particular species: Bluefish

A cookie-cutter-sized October schoolie.

Midnight modeling

Sustained NNE winds during October 9th - 11th, days before the full Hunter's Moon, pushed the flood tides in the back 2.5 ft. higher, or more.  Waders were a necessity, as the bite was too good to miss..  

By the waters, all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.

With November, the bite out front became consistent (for schoolies).

The November full moon out front.  Many a windy night in the thirties had to be endured for a shot at (short) fish.

Sub-28" carcass.

A November Sand Eel bite in full-swing: these are the days to hold onto, cause April and May are very far off..

A page torn from the graduating Class of 2015 yearbook.

Very close to 28"

A schoolie stuffed with Sand Eels...

This fall, the schools of keeper bass swam under captained keels, while shorts were in abundance at every surfcaster's heels. 

When one rods bends, others quickly seek to mimic its shape.

A Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) cautiously considers the Dunkin' contents before clutching the bag "to go," sprinting over the sand dune and devouring the easy morning find all its own.

Her indented caudal tail of which can I only hope has many thousands of miles ahead of her in a life lived out-swimming predators and a heartbeat-stopping-hoist of man, such that it someday grows larger than a that of a broom, swaying her roe-laden belly slowly within the still tide of a moonlit spring estuary. 

Stippled back dots over lavender and brown stripes.

Double-headers beside double-headers down the beach from even more double-headers.  Da capo al fine (repeat from the beginning to the end).  Note: absent to all anglers were pulls of drag from fish longer than 28"

Exposures - May 2018

If it were the yellow-eyed, gator Bluefish who won the coin toss of April 2017 for inshore dominance, surfcasters alike must unanimously agree that this year’s win landed “tails-up” in forthright favor of the winter-months-missed, migrating tribes of Striped Bass.  Much like the Blues of the year prior, flaunting the shallows of the shoreline this season were the splayed caudals of linesiders seeking-out prey seemingly everywhere, foraging on tides rising and ebbing, and later, at times, even biting on the tails of Menhaden that I first observed in local waterways as inconceivably early as February 28^th.  In the weeks that followed that date, snow fell upon the backs of these surface-breaching Bunker on more than three stormy occasions, but their sudden arrival left me wondering just how far-off in time the ancient chase of scaly predators would be.

As with the inception of every first trip to the salt and every commencement of first cast, I found myself following in the footsteps of preparatory ritual.  Reels were cleaned, greased, and re-spooled, knots tied, and leaders strung as certain, recurring thoughts were finally and physically loomed-of and focused upon over the clamped jaws of a dutiful vise, specifically, those concerned with the whereabouts and timing of my quarries’ arrival.  Again, I was a man one-step closer to a briny christening. 

Like most things in Nature, there blossoms one day when suddenly something appears, and then there is no turning back.  This year, such was the mass-invasion of 34"+sized Stripers to our waters at about mid-April.  The all-important breeders of the genepool.  Not only did the average sand-straddling surfcaster seem to eat his cake and have it too, talk of the town was the once-in-a-lifetime landing of a jaw-dropping 58lb. river-migrating matriarch from the shallows of the Raritan on the month’s full moon.  Social media and staple fishing website forums each concurred to the consistency of catches.  Needless to say, just like the incalculable membership of this strong showing of April fish, an equally inestimable number of cameras and cell phone phameras were kept busy capturing the mesmerizing profiles of fish hoisted both day and night, sagging of stuffed white bellies while held outstretched or suspended in-arms before an angler’s approving smile.  This was it, and as angling author Ted Leeson wrote best, “something important had continued.” 

...a tight bond where two synthetic contenders are being drawn to join together in unison, to never falter or slip, whose embodiment represents the unification of  old and new, where the opposing pairing of nylon monofilament coils in a firmly-wrapped, knotted collusion to the polyethylene fibers of Dyneema-based braid, forming the essential unity which is the very physical link serving to connect this man to the faraway saltwater depths of my fevered passions.

My lifeline empowering me on this perennial quest for peace. 
I will vow to push forward for more, to endeavor, and ultimately, triumph as a man humbled by his surroundings, fully-aware that if a fish happens to flop upon the bubbling sand of the surf, then all the better for me. 

"You can’t catch fish if you don’t dare go where they are" - Norman Maclean

The season's first - oh so good!

What one cast giveth, another taketh away.  Simply said, a beachwalk find.

You may only be a surfcaster, but you are a surfcaster dedicated to experiencing the bounty of riches Nature serves for you to feast upon like that of a ravenous gourmand.

Let 'em go, let 'em grow

Exposures - October 2017

This happens more times than not.  I could be perched high-and-dry on stone or sand, somewhere bending graphite, scanning and retrieving, observing and listening, whether in the brightness of day-light or under the frailty of moonlight, or even halfway submerged in moving saltwater with this same rod held in hand, when suddenly I feel as though I'm at odds with myself.  Sometimes, I feel as though I'm letting something beautiful slip forever away.  A frame of reference.  My very own perspective.  Something that my eyes have laid rest upon, whether enticing and uncommon, or a sight so common that I have at once viewed it in an instance or juxtaposition or scenario of lighting made strikingly uncommon, so as to make me pause at bringing to life the possibilities of a tugging tautness of line, to the connection of an outstretched occasion of hope swallowed within waves of water and salt to unseen raised fins and thrusts of splayed tails I am habitual of seeking.  For casting to come second and wait while I first... remove a point-and-shoot camera from my surfbag.

I blame Nature.  She distracts me in my thoughts and motions.  Everywhere I turn.  Her striking silence of light.  Her bronze colors of twilight that smolder into darkness.  Her ombre tones of indigo that slowly wash away into daylight.  Her exhalation of reddish colors she paints upon the heavens.  Her over-spilling roar of waves that hiss upon the endless thirst of sands.  At dreamy-looking water and wind-driven whitecaps.  At star-heavy skies.  At the taste of her salty breath.  At her kingdom of children - those finned, feathered, furred, or shelled.  Her body of flora. 

Although it's not exactly easy to refrain oneself in ripping metal through an emerald green-colored school of False Albacore suddenly erupting, slicing and slurping in sound at a melee of baitfish within short casting range at one's immediate twelve o'clock, or hold-off at flinging-out a winning cast to a terrorized school of bay anchovy or peanut bunker or silverside or mullet spraying airborne like torrential raindrops striking the water's surface only a rod-length away, I cannot ignore some desire aching within me at capturing with the click of shutter what I'm made privy of witnessing as a surfcaster.  To fish or not to fish, that sometimes is the question.  For me, it's always about fishing, but it's not always about fish.

At least such a "dilemma," as it may be fancied, does not happen more times than not.  But the paradox is that when it does, I'll want some satisfying taste of some suitable balance, found only somewhere between my straining slingshot genuflecting before the giving sea and a photo of the ensuing event(s) consummating in the victory of a catch made from shore.

The viewing of a photo can be thought of as a two-dimensional resuscitation of experience. A turn-key for unlocking the past.  And often times, I'll reason that it is some wordless photo that inspires a world of words to assemble.  But without any new words to contribute to this blog of late, I feel obligated at the least to share a selection of exposures I captured through the fish-eye lens that is October's bringing.  Fortunately, some even contain fins and scales. 

Sandy Hook's "Fisherman's Trail."  A 3/4 mile length of sandy solitude leading to the therapeutic apothecary of an awaiting sea. It's a demanding hike over soft sand, but it leads to well-known and productive, fast-moving water, both to fishermen, and fish.

Anglers amble homeward under October's waxing gibbous rising only two nights shy of beaming completely full.

An angler, casting from the most northern fringe of Jersey's miles of wet sand, who is as physically close as he can get to the Marine Parkway Bridge or the air traffic control tower of JFK miles away over open water.  What lies between and beneath however, are the prized fins of his waking dreams.

Migrating Sanderlings forage the tide's wrack line.

Moonrise as captured through dune grass (Ammophila).

The swirling tide of Sandy Hook's "Rip" makes it evident as to why fish find this water agreeable to hunt throughout. 

Tight to a cocktail Bluefish.

Proximity.

"We wait all-summer-long for her arrival to our near-shore salt-brined amphitheater."

"...that special fish masked by those unmistakable black pelvic dots of four or more, her football-shaped form dressed in a seemingly scale-less ultra-hydrodynamic luster, one revered, reputed, and acceptably understood amongst the morning parlance of tailgate nomenclature."

"...this mackerel posing as a member of the true-tuna genus Thunnus, however well-disguised in her flawlessly verdant brilliance and flashes of pink, silky-smooth iridescent sheen, one painted in the sighted-signature pattern of upper-dorsal squiggles crowned by a row of free-swaying finlets."

"For the reeling revelation of having received Euthynnus alletteratus."

Shoulder-to-shoulder metal-slinging Albiemania in full-effect.

Bay Anchovy

Albies going-off.  "Those targets of piscatorial passion rapidly racing to assault the many hapless Anchovies and Silversides they prey."