Wading, Waiting & Wondering

Where were you fishing on the morning of October 27^th, 2012?  I was standing knee-deep before a crashing, white-water stretch of heavenly beach blissfully being reminded how sweet and delicious the bountiful fruit from the Fishing Gods’ cornucopia can taste.  As luck had it, the entire week leading-up to this particularly climactic day was nothing short of fall-fishing at its finest along my local beaches.  Like clockwork, southbound migratory stripers and chopper bluefish corralled terrified pods of peanut bunker, driving them through the breaking waves of the surf and onto the backwash of the sand at the start of each morning.  Before my awestruck eyes and adrenaline-fueled casts, curling sets of waves, normally sea-green and slightly-transparent in color during this time of the season, became blackened as tightly-schooling masses of thousands of these helpless fish were faced with an imminent doom; that of splashing, thrashing, and leaping bodies, slapping tails, crushing jaws, and razor-sharp teeth bearing evidence to seemingly insatiable voraciousness, gorging on a feast of peanuts, distending the bellies of said predators in a frenzied, yet calculating, onslaught.  I was made witness to what is characterized as Nature, red in tooth and claw, or in this case, seawater, awash in the glistening scales of the devoured.

In typical autumn-fashion, the preceding week bestowed anglers with overcast ceilings, the handiwork of a sitting low-pressure system, suppressing and diffusing any direct penetration of sunlight through the atmosphere and the ocean’s water column.  This cyclic weather pattern was to continue, repeating on the morning of Saturday the twenty-seventh.  The air temperature was predicted to peak near sixty-degrees, as a ten-mph east wind was blowing directly at my face, building the surf to no more than four-feet in height, its aerated, white-water waves tumbled as set upon set broke and rolled towards the awaiting shoreline.  We surfcasters like to imagine these “fishy looking days” as “bonus time” on a beach after sun-up, as the ordinarily light-sensitive Stripers will invariably forage for more time in the shallower water of the surf-zone and even more aggressively when conditions such as these allow them to utilize inherent traits and habits as actively-feeding ambush predators, and especially while on the hunt during their fall migration.  If the one-hundred-pound Striped Bass of the ocean were to pen a how-to book for us entitled “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Stripers,” we would quickly learn that overcast skies hovering over a mild chop generated by east winds during the fall are preferred by bass, the unrivaled kings of white-water surf, and that such conditions have the tendency to elicit bolder feeding behavior on their half (all things being equal).  Needless to say, I felt confident that the weather conditions would encourage yet another rainbow of opportunity for local surfcasters to feast their pursuits on, having whet their appetites during the days prior after waiting in anticipation all year for developments such as these, days which finally relieve the hunger-pangs suffered by wader-clad shore-bound hunters thirsting for an elusive and highly-coveted specie of fish, afforded the welcomed company of feasting bass from the recent propitious influx of bait and predators prowling our nearshore waters.  The rolling freight train that was the season’s fall-run was in full-swing, barreling down the tracks of the coastline, bending the rods of fishermen fortunate enough to be waiting along her path as she came rumbling through, showcasing awe in her grandness, inspiring endless chatter and self-exaltation on the internet report forums, and depriving a full-night’s sleep for enraptured, die-hard anglers counties-over vying to capitalize on her ephemeral endowment and capricious presence.

Be that as it may, deciding where to fish, specifically, is the indispensable keystone unifying and supporting each angler’s towering arch of knowledge.  Without this proficiency, one is simply wetting a line, and worse yet, doing so at random, personifying the words of Steven Wright, who reminds us “there's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.”  To outsmart our quarry and remain at the forefront as triumphant anglers, we must become expert stalkers of our finned ambitions.  To do so, and do it well, we must repeatedly intercept the movement of fish via a quasi-prophetic prognostication, which for many, is akin to locating the Holy Grail or knowing winning lottery numbers in advance, but serves to reason as to why there are hooks dangling from our lures; our objective is to land fish!  Those seasoned in this sport we engage have covertly accrued coveted skillsets garnished over many years of practice, payoff, pain, and perseverance.  Rarely, if ever, will the specific location or whereabouts of a “hot spot” be shared with soliciting strangers.  However, a general heads-up from fellow anglers while working a stretch of sand, catching the scoop in a beach parking lot before or after a session in the wash, or somehow gaining the insight of daily feeding patterns and movements of fish, are customary (especially with the advent of online report forums), but there are no pro bono acts of kindness or free meal tickets placing one on breaking fish from surfcasters in-the-know.  Such divulgence of information is synonymous to blasphemy, and it is widely considered cheating to invite oneself to stand-in on productive locations where others have worked diligently to discover the presence of biting fish.  Like most other things held to a high regard in life, one must exert valuable time and effort to reach such achievement on their own.  The only freebie I know of is to be ever vigilant for any cluster of parked pick-up trucks equipped with rod racks, coolers, and hordes of fishing-themed bumper stickers, showcasing brand-specific fondness or names of popular east-coast meccas, veritable vehicular passport book stamps, if you will.  These types of fishermen are nearly always in the know, hot onto fish like bloodhounds.  Consider the conduct of their sometimes surreptitious, side-street congregations to be an illuminated neon-sign which reads “something’s probably going on here.”  As hunters of what is, for the most part, unseen to the observable eye, nothing is more important than learning the habits of our quarry, the gratifying manifestation of which is the fruition of reward and is the single-most determining element as to whether or not the enigmatic jig-saw puzzle of options presented before the surfcaster becomes successfully solved, arranged before the angler in the form of a flopping, beached Striper. 

In any case, the sometimes not-so-simple-to-find fish is all that separates the haves from the have-nots, the smiles of joy from the grimaces of exhaustion and unfound determination, the proud from the defeated, and is the sole determining variable which differentiates the monotonous act of casting from catching.  We have all been on the “wrong” beach throughout our seemingly countless endeavors of fishing the various seasons, and even when on the “right” beach, there is never a guarantee that fish will be landed by your hands.  Perhaps that’s where skill, technique, tackle, and experience play offensive amongst fellow anglers.  I have stood beside fishermen who couldn’t stop catching fish, while I couldn’t lure a single minnow to strike presentations for my life dependent!  Perhaps those in-the-know would have said I wasn’t “matching the hatch” or possibly retrieving too fast or using the wrong colored lure or fishing the wrong side of the tide or….  Thankfully, times have changed and I’ve surmounted more knowledge of the sport than I imagined possible, utilizing rewarding, hands-on experience and more importantly, foresight, to become a better fisherman each year, but there is hardly anything more frustrating and egotistically debasing than when the dreaded, rainy black cloud of bad luck singles you out.  I could have arrived on a beach five-minutes too late, missing a passing school of fish, or a wind-knot cluster the size of a golf ball develops on a pitch-black night atop a wet, moss-laden jetty, sidelining my undertaking or worst of all, an entire rig is lost due to mainline-fouling, wrapping around the rod tip, that resulting cast costing me thirty-something dollars and unnecessary heartache as it snaps off and rockets skyward out to sea, disappearing as fast as my optimistic outlook.  I always look before casting, so why didn’t I look then!, I may scream inside my head.  When it rains, it pours, but in an equalizing manner, even the most highly-respected surfcasters of our time, living-legends such as Alberto Knie or Tony Stetzko, have painfully admitted to inadvertently falling victim to haste or carelessness, walking face-first into a proverbial spider’s web, somehow jumbling their normally meticulous actions under the distraction of jaw-dropping, energetic fish, consequently becoming robbed of self-proclaimed prizes-of-a-lifetime.  Moments such as these divert me onto the perilous path of questioning my nearly two decade-long skillset, are the bruising reminders that the slightest lack of focus begets the best of us at times, but more importantly, forces me to mentally take a step backwards, to learn from a mishap, and realize that at times I am only casting a mere one-hundred feet from the edge of a four-thousand-mile-wide Atlantic Ocean, from a single point somewhere along the immediate twenty-mile sandy stretch of neighboring towns and their beaches I’ve come to know as my comfort-zone, essentially heaving a plastic-prayer with every cast that one of its inhabiting wild animals that I seek becomes tricked at my offering in related time and space.  As scientifically-minded as I may approach and justify my passions for this sport, I’m comforted and perennially humbled in that I am always in pursuit of the unknown, wielding an intangible sword of faith, honing my craft amid each encounter as I stand before the frontier of the sea.

  When fortunate strikes and one is in the right spot at the right time however, it immediately becomes flagrantly apparent to the surfcaster.  Imagine the rather simple, but powerfully stirring, five-letter word “blitz.”  If you’ve logged enough time on the sand, I’m sure the linguistic arrangement of these syllables trigger a series of Pavlovian-like knee-jerk reactions, your mind becoming flooded with fond memories forever replayed at-will, engaging episodes of total recall, those defiantly withstanding the tarnishing hands of time.  As fishermen, these represent many of the exalted occasions we hold dear, the laurels of victory worn proudly, moments in time when the stuff dreams are made of transcended into reality.  Whether fantasized in our minds on a blustery winter day amid everyday routine or zealously viewed on a computer screen among the universe of fishing videos waiting to be clicked on YouTube and Vimeo, we all know that the wind-burned skin and saltwater-stained reality of personal experience trumps any electronic comparison.  How can anything compare than to have actually been there?  The sweetest tasting are always the extraordinary cases where we are able to spark recollection of days past which unfolded exceedingly well before our wave-splashed feet, stirring and eliciting a beaming smile, inspiring a mighty, vociferous tale to share (or brag about) with friends, reminding them that you were a distinguished guest to glory and that they were absent for this spontaneously exclusive, marauding carnival of madness, as if we were actively invited to participate from the front-row seats of a boisterous, combative Gladiator-like event, to spectate the up-close inner-workings of Nature’s voracious predators-of-the-sea assiduously at work, a first-class ticket to a surfcaster’s paradise presumably never to be experienced any time soon. 

It is the real-life experience of these pampering moments revealed while wading the surf which resultantly become forever burned into one’s memory, unremittingly serving as the unbridled spirit of hope cradled before each of our encounters with the sea begins anew, the only remaining gift concealed within each surfcaster’s figurative, yet personally authentic, Pandora’s box.  I cherish this gift of hope.  Among all of the other fundamentals defining this sport, it is the most deeply-rooted, but easily overlooked seduction associated with fishing.  Essentially, hope is the most productive lure found within my surf bag.  It could always be my next cast which swims this lure before a foraging, committing, crushing mouth, hooking the fish of a lifetime in the process.  The realistically simple, yet insightful words of the late John Buchan condense my thoughts exactly, reminding us that “the charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.”  Indeed, there exists nothing more than an optimistic promise for reward with each cast we make, for what other purpose would we logically engage in the acts of surfcasting? 

Holding the reins on this continuum of hope, prior to sinking a single foot onto wet sand, my mind feverishly submits the soma to the bundled sensations of anticipation which I hail to on the inside, as the ocean remains obstructed from sight, when my hopes of grandeur are still brightest, and subliminal fantasies of striking a lottery of chosen locations are greatest.  Just as the discerning eye knows that there is a naturally-prescribed individuality embodied in a solitary snowflake, expressed as such in an infinitely variant uniqueness of combination through crystalline lattice composition, that no two are ever identical, we come to realize that in the snowstorm of a lifetime spent fishing the surf, every outing experienced on a beach is positively unique from those antecedent, possessing inherent beauty differentiating, for example, one sunrise, sunset, tidal state, or weather pattern from the untold previous witnessed along our littoral journey.  These observable characteristics aside, to understand the fish’s biologically-driven habits and how those interface within its environment, to understand the seasonally recurring, if not hourly, changes this seascape undergoes, perfecting when and how to fish, which conditions and tides to choose from, and extrapolate where future success may be found, are the variables distinguishing one fisherman’s chosen path from another, ordaining how a true course is maintained at intersecting junctions of choice, determining success at fishing or continued practice at casting.  While striking similarities exist all around us near the water, day-to-day redundancies do not.  We learn this, accepting the fact that change is inherent.  The fish we seek, endowed with undulating caudal tails, move onward.  The accumulations of these judgments we learn however, are what we personally hold dear, becoming cohesively known as each of our individual trials as surf fishermen. 

As each awakening day in the surf begins anew, it is my hopeful anticipation that thrives intolerably up until the very last second, the last blinking of my eyes, where the fleeting, fine threshold of the unknown still dwells in a blackened room, before the door which I crack open begins to flood this seemingly devoid expanse with blinding light, specifically, as the sand dune becomes crested, or the vegetative pathway fully walked through, will I finally become relieved when these eyes make view of the water I will be working to coax methodically like an alchemist, summoned to produce forth the finned, foraging eyes of gold from aqueous unseen realms of the sea.  Only then, will I know whether the box of hope which I carry with me to the edge of the sea, honored by way of the splashing splendor and swimming retrieval of my very-first cast, may awaken the opportunity to wrangle with yet another declaration of distinction discovered on the wave-pounded sands framing our shoreline.

These pensive thoughts of mine, realized, pondered, and refined over years of solitude on the sand, personal lessons acquired as a result of trial and error, are what compromise my values, hopes, and dreams as a surfcaster.  I deliberately stood within a gently-breaking surf once again, more so for nostalgia’s sake on a particular late-October day, realizing that it was exactly one year ago, on a Saturday morning where I tracked a path through Monmouth County’s jetty country, when I was engaged in battling a fat and frenzied thirty-five-inch Striped Bass, my tightly-grasped graphite rod being tested as it was magnificently arched over, seemingly to breaking-point, aimed eastward under a foaming white-water surf.  I can vividly remember the remarkable occurrences as though it were yesterday, when on that date I was fortunate enough to be among the first hand-full of anglers enthusiastically inviting ourselves to a magical free-for-all buffet materializing before our astonished eyes.  A culmination of understanding, fortuitous fall circumstances, and perhaps blind-luck were offering me a spectacular reward in the form of blitzing keeper-sized bass, the sea at my feet teeming with tens of thousands of terrorized, helpless peanut bunker pinned along a jetty and its beach pocket.  From where I stood, the roaring and deafening powers of immortalization answered each heaving cast of hope I launched into the deep, dark-blue-colored saltwater exposition of divinity.

In retrospect, I must admit that the experience was bittersweet.  Rapturously and obstinately focused on the fish-fighting task at hand, Nature would painfully remind me that good things can suddenly come to a crashing end.  Within thirty-hours from this point in time, I was packing my car with personal affects and clothing, abandoning my defenseless, seaside hometown in accordance to a mandatory coastal evacuation.  It was less than forty-eight hours from that delightful morning spent straining arm muscles and feverishly reeling back in stripped-line from large, powerfully-running fish in the surf, when the devastating fury of Hurricane Sandy made landfall along the very beaches I had been standing upon that morning, permanently disfiguring the face of the communities and their beachfronts I knew only days before.  The coastal towns which we knew so intimately and enjoyed the pleasures of fishing up until this point, were forever altered, devastated from near-category-two wind speeds, a deluge of roiling, inescapable floodwater, exacerbated by the gravitational effects of a full-moon, generating a twelve-foot tidal surge, while tsunami-like waves carved-away at a vulnerable oceanfront, obliterating entire beaches and annihilating accompanying properties.  Calamity struck overnight.  The ordinary-life taken for granted, which many thousands of people recognized, was instantly swept from under their feet, turned upside-down, and for some, never to regain normalcy. 

Would it be oxymoronic for me to call this experience of an outstanding morning in the surf my own calm before the storm, how the peaceful and rewarding yield from one final opportunity to battle southbound-swimming bass before years’ end was the prelude to an all-out hell on land?  Is it apropos to consider this unfolding morning a foreboding, microcosmic demonstration of the shear vicious potential which erupts about the playground of the tempestuous sea, whereby one eating results in another eaten?  How in one moment, life may proceed in its rhythms unscathed and uninhibited, until forces beyond any meaningful control mercilessly assail existing circumstances, introducing chaos, permanently altering fates believed to be ordained by free-will, savagely serving to remind those that life is a process with an established beginning and an unwritten ending.  It was Joseph Conrad, who prudently wrote that “the sea has never been friendly to man.  At most, it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”  From the perspective of mankind living idyllically by the sea, this is certainly a truth, especially as the arrival of a powerful, Gulfstream-fueled hurricane could just as well promise death by the sea.  As for the schooling fish I observed last October, a similar interpretation of this statement may apply to their resulting struggles, since simply living in the sea is an accomplice to perpetual restlessness.  The ever-seeking, finned finality of death delivered by the gaping mouths and striped bodies of larger kin maintains the circuitous struggle of life, literally feeding upon itself in order to prevail as the resource, the stock of fish we covet and admire, the contestants we yearn for and dare to engage, as fishermen of the boundlessly churning surf.

Thankfully, many splendidly striped specimens have come between then and now.  I would be out-of-my-mind if I said I had anything but a spectacular year since the twenty-seventh, but I optimistically, if not defiantly, stand in the surf again, thirteen months later, wading, waiting, and wondering.  With the season now ebbing to a close, it will not be long before I sling my very-last cast, forcing myself to confront and reluctantly accept the inevitable, unavoidable hollow-feeling associated with every year’s completion, where the dotted period is struck to the concluding sentence of my chapter symbolizing a year-long serial in the surf, attentively watching for my lure to splash as it crashes atop the saltwater mystery of the unknown, hoping for one familiar, startling tug to interrupt the wobbling return representing my finality of effort.  With each unanswered retrieval of my presentation, cast with a burning desire, I cannot help but to ask myself why, as humans, do we often note the passage of time elapsed with a celebration or relive recollections, if only in our minds, in order to rejoice in such passing?  Why, as surfcasters, do we instinctively entrench ourselves for probable failure knowing the possibility of reliving the excitement of an identical encounter is close to impossible?  Why live in retrospect at all when the singular promise of a brighter future, the greatest gift of all, offers the potential to outshine any prior experience?  Are fond memories all we have to justify an existence as fishermen or is hope for a charitable future the grandest catch of all, hooking every one of us deep from within, penetrating to the core of our souls, beckoning for our participation, to appeal for our individual benefaction, guiding the cursive movement of the pen’s tip, writing the script that is a new day unfolding on the wave-soaked sands of a beach? Carry on and cast forth, say I!

When action develops, suddenly everyone comes out of the woodwork for a shot at rod-bending glory.

A fall feast for fishermen and Striped Bass alike is illustriously demonstrated atop waves rolling ashore.  Here, a keeper-sized Striper crashes the surface as members of the school working below entrap peanut bunker about the sea’s natural boundary, forming a ceiling of doom.

Dear Darlington

On this evening I do not hear a distant, rumbling murmur overspilling from the stirring cauldron of the sea, rising to fill the damp and thick, salty-smelling hollow space of dusk I am standing within.  I know there can be no waves crashing thunderously and splitting apart against her body to the restlessness of this ocean’s rhythmic relay of waves thrust ashore. There is a relative silence from the street where my vehicle has settled still, but I know as my physical perspective changes, as I advance eastward, closer towards her, everything will suddenly become different.  My senses will have grown attuned by the upsurge of a breathing tide foaming at my feet, sliding and gurgling through a weave of rocky crags and crevices, spouting spray and sound with an endless uprush of diligence as I dare to angle, superficially immersed atop the harassed, bouldered-projection I perch.

It is from an oceanfront bluff of dry land where I begin seaward, to my sodden outpost of unending compromises, away from a bed of coarse and aged, winter-weather-cracked asphalt, descending with the guidance of gravity over a sand-scattered and overturned rock-strewn passage that was once a crude, yet oft-traversed and firm-footed, walkway of stairs sheltered under a verdant, tunneling overgrowth of an allée couverte.  A body-brushing of cordate-leaves (Japanese knotweed), that once being flushed through to water-level, was as if someone’s hands, held from behind to blindfold the beach-entrant’s eyes for the safekeeping of surprise, all the while leading the surf-destined ahead, nearer to the glassy volute of sounds spilling ashore, finally fell uncovered, permitting one to gaze wide-eyed upon the inspiration of a broad-blue palette suddenly rising forth from the enormous vista of sea and sky.  A splashing and seething promise of hope.  The awaiting crescent-shaped sloping stretch is of a footprint-spattered and unique admixture of a beige and pepper-colored contour.  Yet, the spreading mounts of sand only boast a shallow granular barrier to the lurching, landward onslaught of the Atlantic, as the darkest areas of saturation are always evident at the furthest touches of the tide, often far up the beach, where it is garnished by the washed-up detritus of empty clusters of mussel shells and stranded rockweeds.  To follow and abide this sinuously-serrated demarcation traced parallel to the sea’s rim, as if it were the painted center line of a twisting roadway ashore, will always entrust the landing of a surfcaster to the very heels of her awaiting concrete-poured steps, those four makeshift rises welcoming the angler in that he may climb-up and fully-ascend atop this propitious podium projecting into the kingdom of the surf. 

This chosen trail of wander, these successive series of impressed steps, each constitute to the alluring distinctions of distance leading the surf-fisher nearer towards that immersion of remoteness, for the absorption of rawness he seeks, such that each sinking footstep amongst the many marched contributes to a storied and prosperous experience.  One both visually and physically, conjuring specific memories of bygone treks made in this same silence of night, recollections of dragging-dreams left behind as meandering footprints in sand and first-casts into an unseen realm of what may be, teasing phases of anticipation, all of which evoke these unique qualities in their own passing thereof, enriching this man’s journey along a hurried march to his chosen stone-slab casting platform. 

A truth with surfcasting is that it grants the mind nearly endless amounts of time to ponder and contemplate without distraction.  For one to find sound footing of the mind and senses amongst the sounds washing-over and soaking the otherwise unsound surfaces of slick rock.  Idle thoughts become a valuable resource when utilized effectively before Nature’s playground; they’re entirely your own, allowing one to freely ruminate over ideas and delve into reflections seemingly as vast as the deeply stirring sea splashing before one’s feet. While I may not always catch a fish, my overt objective, I always withdraw from a beach having successfully reeled-in the precious moments of a peaceful purpose.  As expected, I’m quite eager to step forward, prescribing yet another therapeutic trek towards the curative sea, as I hastily gather gear from the confines of my car, the various armaments of carbon-fiber, carbide-steel, and polyester-blended Gore-Tex that will accompany me throughout this outing. 

With the scalloped sea’s surface in view, a long-awaited and relieving sense of discovery radiates in a smile from my face.  My eyes are peering forward in a mesmerized fixed-stare at the panoramic sight of a pewter-colored ocean, accentuated during this hour of twilight with subtle hues of lavender, pink, and various shades of blue.  Her gently-animated, scalloped surface flutters as a mild south-east breeze blows onshore.  This air of an invigorating, warm summertime steeping is openly welcomed, an invisible usher to the night, enveloping my face and hanging arms exposed from a t-shirt.  The surf is breaking below waist-height.  With the tidal state nearing high-slack, I’m made anxious to begin swimming my rattling, plastic-lipped presentations asea. 

In every instance, this commanding ocean exposes a new demeanor to share with desirous observers.  Her capricious personality changes hourly with each subsequent movement of the tide, altering wind direction or velocity thereof, and on rarer occasions, exhibits the seemingly mysterious, half-mile-long parallel-running striated streaks of a foamy white-colored perspective streaming about her surface, the kinetic evidence of convectional forces arising from the current’s Langmuir circulation.  Her temperament tested by the swell-forming influence of storms and tempests, faraway or quite nearer, those which encroach upon the horizon with the blackest of advancing darkness, the various tugging phases of her coaxing lunar companion in star-sewn orbit, coloration changes reflected of the shining sun’s angle according to the time of day, the presence of a clouded or clear ceiling, atmospheric disturbances born of changing barometric pressures, and to the glinting jade-green tones of her complexion through cloud shadow, even the month of the year is altogether relative.  The sights she offers always rob my immediate attention, inducing and warranting idyllic thoughts of wonder as I marvel at one man’s self-defined sanctuary of solitude.  On this night, her mood is tranquil and tamed, inviting me to join her in this small time of serene spirit.

Acting as buttresses within the periphery of my vision are the ominous plateaus of flat-top jetties, stretching east for more than two-hundred feet into the Atlantic’s vastness, their uppermost rocks seemingly barely visible from the tide in this calm crepuscular period of waning light.  From afar, one can envision them as the dark, elongated floating backs of immense whales exhibiting no rising motion from the surrounding sea, their mass too great to be affected by the water’s endless motion.  I have a respect for these jetties as I know they are a bountiful resource to the surf fisherman.  Over the years, I have come to visit them many times, honored to accept their welcoming invitations at any hour of the day and night, perhaps even taking their acquaintances for granted.  Through my eyes, the imposing rock-piles are like mighty stone bookends bracing a voluminous and revered library of select books acquired over many years of searching, collecting, reading, and cherishing.  Just like an exceptionally though-provoking book held in hand, they too serve as a compilation of knowledge to be learned from, symbolizing priceless enlightenment in printed form which invokes stirring and nurturing thoughts, inspires spirited aspirations, prompting the mind to adopt a vicarious relationship with the ink-splattered volumes of paper. Discovering favorite locations to cast from along the many nooks of a jetty, coupled with their associated tides and favorable winds, are noted like dog-eared pages in this book; reminders of what works best and when.  Standing resolute upon their platforms passionately awakens a warm feeling inside, similar to that of nestling comfortably into an inviting couch on a cold winter night, except out here it is the primitive attitude of the night that I seek in order to awaken and digest that hibernating sense of personal-discovery slumbering inside.  There are special moments where profound revelation is realized in the vast capacity and unmined contrivances of human thought.  Sometimes these notions may be introduced to us through the pages of a book, fed to us by provoking words of literature, while other times the self-discovery is bestowed in a type of transcendental seclusion. The smallness of being alive within something inconceivably large.  After allowing the mind to “let go,” these personal moments of clarity sometimes unveil themselves when immersing one’s soul within the awaiting environment of Nature’s endlessly expressible perfection, striking like a bolt of lightning, interrupting the idle gaze of a thousand-yard stare out towards an endless horizon.  It was Melville who understood this as well as anyone else having been exposed to the whispering voice of the sea, writing that “everyone knows meditation and water are wedded forever.”

Who could possibly argue against the notion that we are undoubtedly designed to individually appreciate, whether through silent reflection or deeply-respiring aspiration, the facets of Mother Nature’s beauty, but often find ourselves too distracted with the daily goings-on of life, and resultantly, if not unwillingly, suppress any longing need to reconnect.  To feel alive once more.  To be set-free.  As a devoted surf fisherman, my cure to this aliment is as inherent in remedy as salt is in saltwater, always awaiting for when I may flee from land to a familiar mosaic jetty-top stretching eastward into the deep depths of the Atlantic’s secrets, where my determined soul shines as bright as a coruscating sunset set to slip behind the horizon over my shoulder, presenting a fisherman with the forthcoming favor of darkness.  It is here, on such a storied stone stage, where I may bask in a peaceful seclusion for however long I choose to remain.  For however long I choose to be.

These jetties were constructed by mankind at opposing ends of this sandy stretch of beach, securing an oceanfront throughout decades of seasons where the might of an untamed sea tempestuously tested the groin’s unyielding strength in bouts of wave-pounding fury, displacing countless tons of indefensible sand in ceaseless writhing foamy fits of torrential white-water crashing and forcefully pulling undertow, a determination to displace gazillions of grains of sand from the beachfront to scattered offshore locations.  Sand, after all, is a nomadic wanderer, never meant to remain in any permanent locale.  It is Nature’s molecular coastal building-block, her fungible and plastic base-layer to all sculptures littoral which she uses without end to reshape her environment at will.  It is the job of these prodigious rock-piles, purposefully placed together like snug puzzle-pieces for a greater purpose, to remain firm and invariably protect what is positioned between their rocky outreaches.  They are like unwavering sentinels of the shore, always at the ready to suppress what the mighty Atlantic burdens their assemblies with.  As heavy stone bookends serve to function as polar boundaries on a densely-packed bookshelf, securing upright all that lies between, these collectively-placed, unmoving boulders arranged together as jetties rest as immobile as Gibraltar. Their massive weight is displaced atop the soft, sandy beach actively fluttering around its wide footprint to the cadence of the ocean’s tidal currents.  The sleeping giant I choose to visit tonight, my stronghold from which I venture to surf-cast atop, I know dearly as the Darlington Avenue jetty.

She is a robust and fisherman-friendly arrangement of basalt boulders and spalls, engineered perhaps with intent of prevention or serving as an impediment of coastal erosion, but in actuality, she physically exacerbates the occurrence thereof and hinders the natural phenomenon of long-shore current - otherwise known as littoral drift.  Over the tides of time, beachfront deposits of sand on the northern (updrift) side of her rocks have become stripped from the shoreline as the transporting capacity of littoral drift worked feverishly to remove sand and distribute these deposits further up the beach, conversely creating a build-up along the south-facing (downdrift) rocks of an adjacent groin to her north.  It is the embodiment of this jetty itself, extending outward into the sea, which unintentionally acts to impede this ceaseless process of drift, disrupting the supply of sand about its boreal migration, which resultantly compounds erosion along the base of her updrift side and exposes such beachfront to the wrath of a mercilessly pounding sea. 

Nevertheless, she waits unconditionally throughout the night for fishermen to stand atop her slick and glossy, black-colored back, satiating those who sojourn like that of the turning pages of a well-received novel to the afflicted soul.  She lies patiently during my absence, as time is of no consequence to her.  Always at the ready, she rests undisturbed under the weight of my crunching-sounding carbide-studded footsteps during a pre-dawn arrival, or in times as now, before teaming with her throughout the desolate shroud of night.  She allows a fisherman to “walk on water” per se, enabling and drawing an angler further onto the ocean than what is otherwise physically possible.  It’s as though I follow a subconscious longing, one glowing and breathing like a respiring wood-fire, stoking steadily within the hearth of my soul, awaiting to be fueled by and unified with Nature atop this motherly aqueous shepherd, flanked by the splashing deep-blue genesis of all evolutionary life as we know it, momentarily immersing myself around her rising and falling, organically-olfactive, glorious presence. 

These rocks of basalt I stand solidly upon were formed hundreds of millions of years ago hundreds of miles below the earth’s sea-floor crust under unimaginable pressure and temperature in a liquid slurry of yellow molten magma, squeezed and extruded upward towards the surface via the growing pains of plate tectonics stretching within a maturing planet Earth, later solidifying after cooling, and eons later extracted from a mountainside quarry by man and machine.  Their resting place is now here, where on these rock-solid flattened boulder tops summer-warmed saltwater rushes over my Korker-clad wader boots, the ebullient spirit of an ocean attempting to drawn me closer a part her world with foamy water submerging my lower legs, begging at my planted feet as a tugging invitation and welcoming wash-over to the edge of a lively sea.  I am thankful, for without this rocky promontory I would not have the liberty to stand from this solitary, wave-splashed and frothy jetty-tip lining eastward, where I may seek such dousing challenges beckoning from Nature, to reconnect with myself much like the longing lip of a swimming plug digs to reunite with seawater, to unwind as freely as whirling mainline escaping from the spool of my reel, to provide this man an adventurous outlet where I may pronounce myself one daring footstep closer before the mighty Atlantic.

As sunset advances and the angle of light increasingly sharpens in long shadow, subtle hues of salmon and pink, as if shared from the retiring sky’s palette, grow to faintly reflect from her wave-soaked, glistening boulder tops before an ensuing blindness of obsidian blankets the heaven’s submission.  Watching the ambient light dwindle while atop the wet rocks is always a picturesque and rewarding spectacle to befall the eyes.  Adding to the serenity may be perfectly-formed waves rolling towards the shore, bypassing the jetty’s entrapment of rocks.  I always enjoy watching breakers rise to the height of the flattest-footing, spilling-over to pass me by, transforming in perspective appearance as they crash onto the beach, their backsides displaying an azure, aerated white-color, striated in kinetic circulations of rotating seawater exhaling a trail of salty-spray raining in its wake, before collapsing entirely in a sonorous crash on the slope of beachfront.  The comforting sounds of seawater rushing over the flat-top rocks at a forty-five degree angle, gurgling, energetically splashing skyward, crossing the entire width of the groin in a fomenting blanket, and channeling throughout all its fissures as the water resultantly returns to sea level can be quite melodic to the ears.  The naturally-rhythmic timing of waves gushing over and lapping throughout the rocks produces a sound which soothes the listening ear, much like a river sweeping downstream over a bed of smoothly-rounded freestones would.

With nightfall upon me, I am comfortably at peace.  This projecting seaside haven stretching into the ocean’s body rests solely to me.  She is my rock-solid foundation of freedom, a fortress to fish upon.  With a canopy of stars and the familiar company of constellations overhead, I allow my thoughts to wander like spilled water seeking to spread over dry voids, watching an occasional satellite orbit hundreds of miles above my head.  I listen carefully to waves breaking over her periphery of boulders, intently watching them flood the moss-covered platforms I hop between, sometimes shifting myself to a safer-looking rock to alleviate any apprehension and attempt to avert the inevitable soaking spray of seawater.  Although the tide may have peaked, and the sea-level will now slowly fall, waves continue to break over the jetty’s tip and southern-facing edifices, flooding the interior hollows between the parallel-running tops of the structure.  The boulders are black and the water appears the same color.  Every movement must be carefully calculated and committed with knowledgeable conviction that my creeping footsteps will strike a solid, supporting surface.  Times endured and shared on these rocks have strengthened my confidence in remembering where the safest footholds are amongst the shadows of darkness.  A wooden, moss-covered cut of timber, soft, water-logged, and caked of barnacles and green-colored algae, is lined beside a rusted-out corrugated steel wall that runs the internal middle length of this jetty as if it were her central nervous system, her sense of “touch” much like that of a fish’s lateral line to its fusiform body, and is less than a foot below the surrounding foundation of rocks.  When submerged, as it is by tonight’s obscuring tide, stepping down into it is best avoided, lest the risk of an unwanted and probable fall or injured ankle.  Only a fool would attempt to traverse her lengthy body, let alone her outermost ledges, without wearing proper foot-gear.  Out here, and often when alone at night, apprehension mixes with confidence, fear with peace, but never does it suppress the spirited thirst of compulsion that is surf fishing from her stony, white-water soaked ledges.

After fishing on her for some time, one comes to realize that she hosts a maternal relationship along the beachfront, nurturing and providing an edifice for a multitude of aquatic and littoral life.  Burgundy and moss-green-colored algae completely laminate her tidally-exposed rocks in a slippery veneer.  There are colonies of mussels and barnacles impregnated to these rocks, primarily visible during outgoing or low tide.  Sea birds alight and forage among her crevasses, while cormorants torpedo and migratory ducks dive underwater beside her outcroppings to forage for prey. Crabs, lobsters, bivalves, blackfish, bluefish, striped bass, sea robins, fluke, eels, varieties of baitfish, and legions of other living organisms find refuge and sustenance below the waterline encompassing this assembly and outcropping of rocks.  It serves as a pseudo-reef, a home and nursery for all near-shore creatures breathing underwater, which reasons as to why those clad with spiked shoes above water pay homage to her.         

Alas, Atlas has shrugged.  Solid earth has quaked beneath this fisherman’s feet.  To the dreadfully distressing and disturbing demise of Jetty Country surfcasters, there are credible (altogether incredible) rumors circulating amongst the fishing community of her impending doom, a fate to be suffered at the hands of her creator, mankind.  What one hand hath giveth, the other will now taketh away.  The exact date of her looming execution has not been publicly announced, but a death sentence, a slaughter of innocence, will fall upon her in the charge of a cold-hearted vivisection, a condemned rock-notching at the callous undertaking of moaning, hydraulic machinery, as the eviscerating, steel-fingered grapple buckets of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will come crashing down upon her flanks, twisting and digging deep between her ribs, tearing and breaking her apart piece-by-piece sometime during the Spring of 2015, permanently dismembering her alliance to dry land, terminating her pulse, followed by an improper interment by mountains of sand pumped from select offshore deposits, those wordless witnesses to an act of murder, who by no choice of their own, will smother and asphyxiate her dynamic, life-sustaining habitat, needlessly and futilely “replenishing” her neighboring beaches in the process. 

Before this sinful, foreboding day manifests, you can be sure that I will fervently fish her rocks with every waking moment and tide I am presented, earnestly treading atop her body before dawn, scanning for familiar firm footing as I ardently rocket plastic and metal-lipped presentations into the depths of the surrounding Atlantic, aiming towards the glow of each newly rising sun, before reluctantly retreating shore-bound for the very last time.  Only then, will I woefully and finally wave a proverbial white flag.  My carbide-crunching footsteps will track a way westward over wide fissures and hollows, back towards the slumping consolation of dry sand as though the biting sounds of each step will embody the grasping words flowing to the final paragraph of this concluding chapter detailing the autobiography she coauthored together with my every visitation.  Our time together will have expired like that of dying daylight shrinking from the setting sun.  The brilliant aura of her rock-solid austerity fading-away in the dusk sky’s darkening gradient of cobalt color much the same as when the rich liveliness of green-colored scales and glistening iridescence is stolen from the body of a lifeless Striper.  It is my hope, that at the very least, I may willingly, if not forcefully, raise to the surface a smile from the depths of my tarnished spirit, when my feet fall unto her mating beach’s smoothened sand one last time, after setting my eyes seaward to reminisce in years of resplendent reward favored as a result of countless memories born on these rocks.  A faith found in fishing, forged entirely on fragmented rock.  They will affectionately be remembered as dates with my dear Darlington.

Like the painfully agonizing loss of a true love, one may question whether it was better to have had the pleasure of her short-lived accompaniment and those resultant fond flashbacks landed throughout years of rock-hopping, than to have never been introduced to her at all.  To have never savored at the sweet surrender of sugar spoiling one’s taste to all else that is far lesser.  To never worry that it will only be impossible to find the fine qualities of her likeness in another.  To carry the burden of bearing witness to a theft of littoral longevity. 

My answer, however painful to swallow, is peppered with a dash of optimism, in that the foaming and flooding tide of her memory will always be cause to remember what matters most in our heart and induces to steer our every waking thoughts as surf fishermen.  For where else would I have had the opportunity to confront Nature in her raw, oceanic form, subjecting myself and limiting my senses under a cloaking veil of darkness, where an impaired reliance on sight was countered by the solicitation of surrounding sounds instead, and treacherous, wave-pounding circumstances compelled my mind to focus on a nearly second-by-second nighttime survival, one of a scurrying and hopping dance of ambition to remain standing upright, battling any persuasive fears to retreat closer towards dryer, higher-rocks, all in the name of surfcasting, in a crazed pursuit to lay hands upon the east-coast’s most popular migratory gamefish? 

The untold alliance, the insurmountable harmony, the symbiotic transcendence of her motherly and protective, rock-solid spirit shared upwards by the interconnection of my finding footsteps, reinforced by the atavistically-inspired freedom experienced from my every whipping cast atop her mossy precipice of rocks are those resoundingly retorts of an emphatic and long-lasting wail crying “Yes!”  A defense of devotion proclaimed with the same intimidating intensity of a gaining, tightly-curling and cresting, overhead-sized wave crashing the flank of her rock-strewn body, smashing her with that of the same forceful and unforgiving challenging charge of battering Bighorn rams colliding head-on.  The wave’s explosion of spay being nothing more than an exhausted appeal to conquer that which is eternally indomitable.  An unshakable response, her bracing testament of unrelenting conviction set in stone, thunders loudly in greatness, as I know this resolve will forever haunt her stretch of the shoreline.  It is her undying existence, in this man’s memory, that will forever bring to mind the quoted words of Tennyson, who I imagine proposed with both a kindred grain of optimism and splinter of regret, “tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”   

Author’s notes:

Dear me!  While there is no Darlington Avenue jetty to actually speak of, I took literary license to name this story about an existing groin stretching out to sea from a Roseld Avenue.  It’s a beautifully-arranged rock-pile geographically due-north about one-hundred-yards from and directly adjacent to a bordering Darlington Road.

And while a groin is not a jetty and a jetty is not a groin, for ease-of-application in context of surf fishermen’s nomenclature, I have used the two interchangeably, although in reality, a jetty is designed to shelter a harbor entrance or navigable inlet, while a groin is designed to reduce beach erosion by trapping or slowing-down the longshore transport of sand.  In coastal engineering terminology, the parallel rows of rocks we refer to as “Jetty Country” in Monmouth County, NJ are most certainly a “groin field.”

Twilight befalls the Darlington Avenue jetty as foamy seawater rushes throughout her boulders.  A befitting epitaph may someday pronounce “Though buried under sand, she is not forgotten.  Her spirit lives boldly in the minds of those she seduced over decades of standing sentry along our Striper coast.  With time and a rising tide, an oceanic home beckons to submerge her body once more.”

 

The tunneling overgrowth of body-brushing cordate-shaped leaves of the Japanese knotweed allée leading to the very sand surrounding my chosen sentinel of the shore.