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 - October 2018 - II

The overcast morning of the 21st. Against the bitter odds of a very windy weather forecast (or even better judgement, for that matter) I was back on the trail in search of tail. After all, October only comes once.

Standing at 6AM in a NNW wind of 26mph, it was quasi-manageable to make worthwhile casts into deep water.  What little hope we shared of fish showing in the surf literally blew away by 10AM after winds grew sustained to 38mph and shifted N.  A relentless sandblasting and pelting to the body and face was the knockout punch.  

Even with rod held high, airborne sand was striking at my reel and guides with the similar sound of precipitating ice pellets, much like this accosted angler must have experienced.

Before the blow shifted N, anglers gave the churning flood-tide a go with a NW wind pushing to their backs.  One or two whales made passage close to shore, periodically revealing movement across the channel by their misty exhalations erupting like geysers from the white-capped sea, and a determined seal bobbed through the tide that morning.  Not a single fish was landed, that I saw.

If you don't go, you just won't know..

Proximity.

817 feet of tanker ship silently slips out to sea on an ebbing tide.

The intoxicating, banded reward of a surfcaster's nighttime obsession.

A beached bay anchovy that made away from the surf's shallow wash of blitzing Hickory Shad and feeding schoolie-sized Stripers.

Sun sets as a microburst rolls-in from the west.  I considered this my last "easy" shot at surf-caught Albies for Oct. '18.  With the sea-stirring winds of the season's first Nor' Easter only 36 hours out from this particular evening, any shot at hooking greenbacks from the surf after this outing would be particularly welcomed, but not probable.  There's always the first week of November, if the weather cooperates, and the Anchovies stay in close to the sand..  

October's Hunter Moon rises to greet anglers who were tight to schoolie-sized Stripers, one after another, for a better part of dusk.

For the first time that I witnessed this fall, pods of medium-sized Bunker schooled the slack tide out-back.  Hopefully, these fish are an indication of good things to follow - as in, large Stripers on the hunt of these arrowhead ripples seen meandering within a moving tide.   

With a Nor' Easter carving-up the coast overnight, it was a relief to finally see an abundance of baitfish outback.  Especially, these guys - "the most important fish in the sea."

Micros and schoolies were the abundant contenders lurking within many an October tide that I was able to fish.  With exception, only a few large Stripers were taken that I knew of.    

Exposures - June 2018

Surface poppers are for those warm afternoons in June along the beaches of the Jersey coast where Bunker pods instinctively capture a fisherman's attention. 

Sunset along the bubbling backwash of a sandy beach scarp I frequent.

A cool hat I found washed-up along the banks of the Navesink late one night.  The Stripers bit, and that was my quick fix.  Prior to this find, I didn't know that there was such a charter operated by a Capt. Kevin Halek out of Atlantic Highlands.  (Kevin, if this happens to be your own hat, I'll gladly return it to you.  I hope the fishing has been treating you well.)

Anglers burning the midnight oil watch from above for any signs of Stripers rising from the bridge's shadow lines under the pods of Bunker that were plentiful for weeks in the river system. 

On one late night this month while working the ebbing tide, heat lightning was flashing over the horizon at a rate over 100 strikes per minute.  A subtle sign that summer was here, and bass would soon be further north.   

Roadway light reflections captured on the ebbing and circulating tide of the Shrewsbury River.

.... and thankfully, there were bass

I dedicate the lyrics of Chuck Berry's song "You Can't Catch Me" to the Jersey surf-caught, Bunker pod blitzing June Striper.  I sure didn't catch them this year.  Beach access & parking restrictions, appropriate timing, habitat & structure loss, wind & weather, work, impulse, you name it.. doesn't matter I suppose if the fish never move within casting range to begin with.  

Chasing after 35 lb.+ blitzing Stripers from the sand is as exciting as it gets for the surfcaster.  I shot this photo in haste, and is deceiving in that the surf was actually about 2+ft. in height that afternoon (for scale).  The dark band is a quickly-fleeing pod of adult-sized Bunker.  As I expressed in a prior post (http://amofins.blogspot.com/2017/10/exposures-october-2017.html), at the more rare times such as these, it's especially difficult to suddenly make shooting photos a priority over casting to giant, fast-moving fish.

Some nights, it is not always a fish that finds the retrieve of my lure, but rather the infamous Rubbery Bryozoan (Alcyonidium species).