Merry Fishmas! '19

Dear Santa,

All I want for Fishmas are keeper-sized Stripers that I can catch & release from the surf in 2020.  Like in olden days, those happy golden days of yore.  Let them gather near to us once more, if the fates allow.  Pretty please...

Yours Truly, 
A 2019 Schoolie-Catching Expert

v.2 (before Santa unhooks, of all tried-and-true Bomber color schemes, his trusty red & white Long-A)

Rockfish à la Norman Rockwell

A Photoshop edit made of Rockwell's "Freedom From Want" (1943) in which a Striper was made the main course. Although the serving platter edit was not my work, I added four other elements to give it a slightly (hardly noticeable due to low resolution) more surfcaster edge. While this particular fall run has not liberated my own feelings of want with respect to beaching migrating bass, the Thanksgiving Day holiday casts upon us a much greater appreciative appeal - friends & family - the very unmoving rocks of our existence.  To surfcast is to perhaps have washed-away in the briny prescription of a saltwater tide the mind's most minor misgivings, even those as inconsequential as bemoaning the spirited absence of one's favorite gamefish, as the keepers and personal bests are always patiently waiting to your back and over your trying shoulders, on dry land, at home. Give thanks to them.  Never stop fighting for them.  But also give thanks to Sax. I fear she may need the help of our good fight too..

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).

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."