It Will Not Let Go!

December 27th.  On days when I don't surf or fish in the morning I like to take a walk up to the beach before work and stare at the water for five minutes.  It's like a meditation thing I practice to settle out any junk going on up there.  When I started across Route 35 on Tuesday, the first thing I noticed was a horde of gannets above the dune line.  Oh s*** I thought.  It just won't end!  I got to the beach and saw gannets everywhere, purple water, and a cluster of beach buggies.  Unbelievable.  The reports were even more amazing:

From my experience, from the 2000s to present, to have fish still around now is 50/50, but to have 20lb and 30lb fish is nothing I've ever seen before.  They weren't all that big, but I heard of a decent number of 'smaller' 30-35 inchers also in the mix.  By this time of year a 32 inch fish is usually worth a phone call to your friends instead of being a small fish.  I wasn't there because I was at work but I got some interesting first hand accounts:

ME:  Ok.  What the hell was that?  30lb fish from Brick to Seaside?  Are you kidding me?
RICK:  I was asleep when I got the call from Charlie.  By the time I got up there the fish were already a half mile north.  They were moving, north, so fast I could only get a few shots at them before getting back in the truck.
ME:  North?  30lbers?  What the hell?
RICK:  They weren't all that big, but I got at least a 20 and a few around 30 inch.  Shell E got the biggest one I saw on that new secret lure he's been using.  It weighed in around 31lbs.
ME:  Unbelievable.  Herring I guess right.  My neighbor said there was herring washed up on the beach in Seaside the other morning.
RICK:  Yeah they definitely weren't on sand eels, they were moving.  Part of the reason was probably the beach being so featureless.  Nothing to pin the bait against.  We got another shot at them, same thing, a copule hours later.

STEVE:  It was fast paced and moving north.  You would get a few shots at them, but then we had to keep moving to stay up with them.
ME:  Not like the sand eels.
STEVE:  We just kept going and ended up way past where we could drive.  No one really noticed because we all kept hooking up.
ME:  Haha.  I can see that happening.
STEVE:  I've never seen anything like this.  Write that in your book.  December 27th!

So the unbelievable fall continues.  With herring and even bigger bunker in the mix, and with milder weather forecast for this New Year's weekend, anything is possible.  I am going to stop saying it's over because I'm starting to get too good at proving myself wrong.  I'm going to give it some looks tomorrow, but will only fish if I see something obvious.  Friday I'm busy and I'll be away this weekend for New Year's.  If there's still legitimate fish around next week, in the New Year, I mean come on!

A surprising sight hit my eyes and camera lens on the morning of the 27th.  What a season.

 

 

 

 

 

 

About Ready to End It

Donald and I hit it yesterday, Christmas Eve morning, and though I caught 100% more fish than Donald, that was only because I caught one fish.  We gave it a good attempt, fished all of first light and covered a lot of sand, and definitely determined it was 'exhaling'.  One sure sign of that was the 'bird blitz' we found.  Ducks were pushing up sand eels which brought the gulls, and gannets were diving on their own while terns were picking up whatever the sand eels were chasing (never trust terns!).  The only ones missing from the party were the stripers.

From there we decided to just plug some holes with mambos on the falling tide- our favorite kind of fishing.  We looked for likely spots and there weren't many.  Since the weather has been trending calm a lot the structure had settled out since storms are needed to sustain contour.  We did manage to find a stretch of beach with better water, so we worked that, skipping from spot to spot with about 7 casts each.  It didn't take long before a nice 28 incher slammed my yellow mambo, and I got juiced up thinking it was the start of something.  6 more spots and 3 miles of beach later with nothing else we decided it was time to leave.

Since we haven't really had even marginally powerful storms since last year (even including Hurricane Irene), the beach has taken on a look of artificial replenishment and is devoid of structure that holds fish.  As the spell of calm weather continues, long-time locals report never having seen our local beaches in this condition.

Since Donald is off for the holiday week, he may want to get a ride from me again, and that is the only thing that will make me go back.  I usually love fishing this time of year, but with only limited areas of good structure, and the ones we fished had nothing in them, I'm kind of turned off.  So I will make my official declaration this week dependant on what Donald wants to do.  I am ready for it to be out of my head so I can get to focusing my laser on other things anyway.

There's Still Some Fish

It wasn't quite that many, but there was a report that a pretty good morning bite went down.  Good enough that if it was the first one during October I would be using a lot of exclamation points.  This is what it is.  You are not allowed to escape just yet!  And with a generally mild and benign ten day forecast it looks like winter is in no rush to begin.  We had a couple chilly nights, but the cold weather hasn't really taken hold yet.

When the alarm went off this morning at 04:30 I woke up with the motivation to fish, but then a greater motivation took over after I opened the sliding glass door and felt a dank south wind.  Sleep.  See, I'm still motivated, it's just that my motivation was elsewhere today in staying comfortable and being well rested.  That's a change for me, because before I would charge out there into anything, all the time, but I have since refined and realized it is smarter to balance my fishing addiction into- not on top of- my other addictions.

I think I'll sleep again tomorrow, with my next openings for Friday morning, possibly Friday evening, and Saturday morning.  When I deprive myself of it for a few days and do other things, it's like a pressure valve building up, so that when I get back there it feels really f***ing good.  The good news is there is still a chance to score a couple more nice sessions.

Starting to Plan the New Direction

I wouldn't say it's over yet and that I'm giving the interior of my pick-up a long overdue vacuum session, but I am going to put some air in the tires tomorrow morning.  After being spoiled for a while, expecting to catch numbers of keeper fish during each outing, the thought of getting out of a warm bed on a 25 degree morning to catch one fish- or not- doesn't really seem worth it.  Of course the chance is still there to get a decent bite, it's not like it's February yet, but I just get a little impatient once it gets to the trickle down.  It's like, alright, can we move on to the next thing already?  I already have winter planned out, let's go, let's go.  Onto the next!

Thousands of birds would obscure the ocean on days this at the time of this photograph when it's going on.  Instead, I only saw several seagulls working over the ducks that were pushing up sand eels.  I looked to the north and didn't see anything coming down.  Empty.

Now, someone will probably bang out something like 15 fish this week in two hours, but like I said I'm starting to pull out.  In other words, I have not finished, the gear is still on standby if I get the urge to make some casts later in the week or this weekend before the holiday.  I have been late to Christmas dinners before because of a blitz, so it's worth it to keep a finger on the pulse until at least New Year's.

What bothers me about the end this year is that the beach looks like a straight formless worthless nothing.  Translated to mean there are no structures, edges, points, or dips to hold fish over a long stretch, which is the type of fishing I count on after the blitzes subside.  At least when there are no fish it's fun to put your plug in some nice water, and until we get a storm that gives us more than a 3-4ft SE ground swell which does nothing to move sand, that situation is unlikely to change.  That's just a reason for me to have more sleep and prettier eyes.

Eithery way, a lot will be determined by what goes on this week.  If it still seems fishy I will hit it this weekend, but if not, done.

Steady Dawn and Dusk Action

I’ve been doing some thinking, not a lot, and reasoned that it’s like a fish farm up there right now.  It’s like the miles of sand eels on the back of the bar are grass and the bass come in and graze at their leisure.  There’s even some “cows” in the mix (I never like using that term) as I’ve heard reports of some 20lb+ fish still being taken.  For the fall, a 20lb+ fish is pretty serious. 

I was fortunate enough to score some well timed dawn and dusk action on Monday and Tuesday before it slowed off where I was on Wednesday.  Monday night was the best bite when Donald, Tom F, and I scored about 4-5 bass each in about 40 minutes using plugs.  Of those fish about one third of them were keepers.  The bass were very finicky on Tuesday morning, but it was good to see a lot fish around even though they wouldn’t bite.  Wednesday was slow so I slept in this morning, and of course probably missed something.

It was just the birds and me this week, or Donald and Tom F.  We had a great time banging out fish by ourselves with light plugs on Monday evening.

After hearing a report of Jim K knocking out 18 fish, I almost felt reluctant about saying this is the final third, especially since there are still plenty of larger fish in the mix.  What it is about this year, though, is that it feels very lazy and stationary.  Most of the beaches are a lot less structured than normal, so there hasn’t really been a move up and down the beach thing hitting edges which can be fun with sand eels. 

It’s kind of been more like go up to your spot and cast over a sand bar that looks like you’re in Georgia and if the fish are biting you’ll get them. Throw metal, throw metal, throw metal, repeat, and repeat, repeat.  Donald even told me a story about how he was nailing bass on a Yozuri behind people that were like robots throwing their metals out to the Azores.  The way the style of fishing has been has made it very easy to become a sloth dullard, making it hard for some to adapt to even a small change of conditions. 

One last fish for Tom and one for me is it for food fish this year.  The Daiwa SP Minnow has been a hit this week. 

The 34 incher pictured above sure felt heavy when I beached him.  When I walked the fish up to the top of the berm for storage it felt like I was carrying a sack of lead.  Lifting it into the back of my pick-up truck bed was a chore, as was carrying it to my deck for fillet work.  When I started the cleaning process I found out immediately why the fish felt like it was stuffed with cement:

Inside of it were 75 fresh undigested sand eels!  And that fish, being greedy, went for one more and it cost him his life.  Of course if I wasn’t there, the bass would have been fine, but another sand eel would not have been.  Figure out that riddle.  Instead of balancing the complexities of the food web, I decided it would be more delightful to spend a few minutes counting the sand eels one by one.  75!

Following another intrusion of mild air today, a pretty good west wind is forecast tonight and tomorrow which should lower the air temperature back to normal, and flatten out the surf as well.  Dawn, dusk, and night Friday has good potential, and so does Saturday morning, especially since it will be calm enough to throw small plugs and floating Needlefish.  I’d really like to get some bites using light plugs on my 8’ rod over the next two days.  It’s been enough of the championship long distance metal casting.




 

The Final Third . . .

Each end of the fall fishing season, as well as most other things, are preceded by signs of change. And every season there is a point in time- it’s hard to explain in words- but there is a time when it starts to feel like ‘the end’ even if only for a day. It’s when the surf and beach have a ‘sterile’ look that is best demonstrated by coming up on a cold February day after a snow storm. Of course, the fishing is still very good now, but if you get real in tune you will get it and will see that look starting.

Signs that we have entered the Final Third:

- Occasions of the sterile winter look
- The arrival of loons and pintail ducks
- Birds working schools of bait with nothing on it
- Cold nights
- A decline of fervent action and blitzes
- Smaller bass
- A highly scheduled dawn and dusk bite

Since the insane action of the past few weeks has waned, not from a storm disruption, and as the calendar drops closer to the New Year and winter, we are most certainly now in what I call the Final Third. The best of it has likely moved on.

I caught all of my fish alone or alone with friends this weekend since I am more of an old striper than a schoolie.  I like the final round because the fishing is just nice.

Fortunately with the multitudes of sand eels around, barring a snow storm, I will most likely still be fishing on Christmas weekend and maybe even New Year’s. The early abnormal snow storms during the past two seasons meant that by this time in those years that was it, but this year a pattern of more SW winds and milder calm weather should keep the snow out as long as a big warm bubble doesn‘t form over Canada.

The final third doesn’t necessarily mean it’s time to start bowling yet, rather now is the opportunity for some delightful sessions with smaller plugs, like mambos, since the fish are in close when it‘s flat. I scored a couple of keepers nice and tight, one on a Daiwa SP Minnow, and the other on a Boone Needlefish. I only keep about three or four fish per year and was only going to do one more for Tom, but my cousin snatched the one in the picture which was ok since I got Tom his tonight. It seems they’re onto a dawn and dusk thing now, and I have a program set up to get into those bites while balancing other responsibilities, so with high pressure overhead and calm weather the next few days should flow nicely.

Back to 'Normal'

After last week’s unbelievable action the size of the fish being caught now has dropped back more to what is expected.  If last week was your first experience with fall surf fishing, you’d be wise to leave the activity on a high note since your next outing will likely never be able to measure up, literally.  Since this weekend, I’ve seen and heard of more ‘Belt Buckle’ size bass in the mix.  ‘Belt Buckle’ bass are the size fish you’d expect to see on some one with a striped bass belt buckle, to borrow a term from Donald.  In other words, the 14-18 inchers.  There are still plenty of 28-34 inch fish, however, and I’ve managed to still scratch out a couple of keepers in each of my sessions over the past week.

With all the fish concentrated over the same three miles of beach day after day the crowds were maddening.  If you look closely, it almost looks like the two guys in the center of the picture were roughing each other up.

I like to complain sometimes, you know, to express the part of me that likes drama.  And there has been plenty to complain about.  The formula this year has created the worst crowd situation imaginable: easily predictable fishing, the fish concentrated over the same beach day after day, abnormally warm weather, and no rain most of the time.  I have never had my line crossed and my spot stolen as many times as this year.  I have never been encroached upon as many times as this year. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like it is ‘common’ sense to know that you can’t hook the fish that’s on some other guy’s line, or that it’s bad etiquette to steal some ones spot, or that you can find your own fish elsewhere rather than sidling up to someone who is hooked up.  It seems the knowledge of those basic social behaviors is now the ‘uncommon’ sense since the proper moves seem to be practiced by an increasingly smaller number of people.

In addition to outright aggression and testosterone expression, the level of innocent incompetence this year has also been at an all-time high.  The following example is why a knowledge of reading the water is not only relevant to catching fish, but also to your life:

If Todd, as we came to know him, was not surrounded by a fine crew of experienced surf persons, or if something like this had happened at night, the outcome would have surely not been the same.  Todd got into this predicament because he didn’t understand the bottom contour, demonstrated by the way he walked off the edge of the sand bar into the rip current.  It was something to watch him getting out sucked out to sea in the rip only to have Steve save his life by actually catching him with his Skippy Tin Squid.  If not for Steve’s sharp mind and hook, Todd would not have made it, and that is serious now.  Meanwhile, as I was on the beach on the phone with 9-11 and taking pictures, I also had to guard Steve’s truck from a guy who no doubt had an intention to steal Steve’s gear.  I’ve never seen anything like it this year.

Here is a well written narrative of the rescue event by Chief500 of Stripersonline:

The Todd Rescue




 

'Historic' Fishing

It sounds like ‘historic’ is the keyword being used to describe what is going on right now.  The term is justified because it’s not only the numbers of fish that are around right now, it’s the numbers and the size.  Here are some examples of conversations I had while I was away from the water:

Rick:  “Well, they started out at keeper size and just kept getting bigger.”

Me: “How many you get?”

Rick: “35.”

Me:  “How many were keepers?”

Rick:  “Almost all of them.”

Steve:  "Well I just had maybe 22 fish in an hour and a half."
Me:  "Did you move?"
Steve:  "No."
Me:  "Any size?" (asked with sarcasm)
Steve:  "Here, you want to hear my tags? 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 28, 36, 34, 26, 34, 33, 31 . . .
Me:  "Your smallest one was 26 inches?"
Steve:  "You want me to keep going?  I've never seen anything like it."
Me:  "You know I'm stuck at work right now."

So there it is.  Not only are there a lot of fish, but there are a lot of very nice size fish.  The only problem, and there is always a problem if you want to find one, is that the sand eels and bass are anchored along the same stretch of beach and it’s not a secret.  So along with ‘historic’ fishing there are ‘historic’ crowds.  The crowds have been maddening, to me at least, more so by the behavior of people pulling into other people’s territory with no regard.  That’s fine for survival, but isn’t very good for sportsmanship.  When I start nailing fish and people ask me, “What are you using?”  I will say, “My brain.  What are you using?”  If there are any synapses left in there that should jolt them.

Vinny and crew got in the action and had an entire day of quality fish.  “We’ve been throwing keepers back for hours now,” was Vinny’s report sometime during the middle of the day.  “My buddy just hooked up right now.  You got to get out of work”

A classic fall picture.  These guys had more keeper fish in one day than most fisherman catch in years.

Tom is back into the groove, literally, and is enjoying some fine dining courtesy of last weekend’s festivities. 

With sand eels banging my boots on the bar, consistent but finally cooler temperature forecast for at least the next week, and without any major storms, where are the fish going to go?  I am afraid already of what the crowd will be like this Saturday.  What I should really do is stop worrying about that and enjoy what is looking to be a once-in-a-lifetime season.  Mood management is of course easier with adequate sleep, however, this weekend is the Berkeley Striper Club Tagging Weekend which runs from 12:00 am Friday through 9:00 am Sunday so sleep is not really going to happen.  Sometimes I question this insanity, but after a fish or two I almost always forget what point I was tryig to make.