. . . They Might Get Them in February

I remember when I was a young and didn't really know how to fish too much, that I would take my sand clogged reels down to the late Ernie's bait and tackle, and he would say with a cigarette in his mouth, "you got too much goddamn corrosion in here.  And quit putting the reels in the sand."  I would agree, he was right, but I always thought he was a little nuts when he would tell me, "Ah.  You can get them in February.  I remember a blitz up by the inlet up in February."  "February?"  "Yeah,  February.  You could catch them in February kid.  Blitzes."

I don't know if he was making that up or not, or he was really a futurist who had a vision that 2012 might possibly be the year of the February striper bite.  Last night I got a call from John, a welder who made a custom rack for me over the past few weeks.

Me:  "Hello."
John:  "Hey Joey, what's going on?"
Me:  "Hey John.  What's up?"
John:  "I figured I'd let you know.  My buddy called me, he was out fishing the other day, I thought he was full of it."
Me:  "No way . . ."
John:  "He said he had like maybe four or six.  But his buddy had something like 25 fish the other day.  He said he could see the bass in the water."
Me:  "North a little?  Out in the water some?"
John:  "Exactly."
Me:  "25?  That is insane.  It's the 27th of January!"
John:  "He called me up and I thought you'd like to know."
Me:  "Thank you.  I'm not going to act on it, but I like to hear what's up.  I could have worn a t-shirt the other day when you were fixing the survey gear.  I guess with that and the sand eels that like to root in the bites are still going."
John:  "It was warm the other day.  Well we'll have to get out there this spring."
Me:  "Definitely.  I need my winter recovery time, but with the birds chirping the other morning I don't feel like I'm getting it.  There's going to be fish into February!"

Now, look at this next picture, and see if you can see like I see that it looks warm.  This was driving over the bridge on Friday:

As of the 29th: 17 days above 50F, 2 days above 60F.  It not only looks warm, it is warm.

As long as some cooler air holds in the high latitudes February will likely be another warm month here in New Jersey.  If you learn the see-saw relationship of temperature in the AR-SE oscillation you will also be able to dazzle your friends with your psychic abilities.

 

 

 

 

 



Was This for Real?

A multitude of birds were working the back of the bar during the morning on January 23rd across the street from my house. 

Was it "junk in the water" or was it fish?  By the way the birds were acting it looked like they were working on sand eels.  Wouldn't be surprised since a few days of east wind may have warmed the water.

Of course the images I saw were real, the more interesting thing is what did they represent.  For about fifteen minutes on Monday morning I watched gulls- not terns- going nuts on the back of the bar as far as I could see up and down the beach.  They were hovering, dipping, doing all the things they normally do when they are having fun feeding on a school of bait below.

Think of it like this.  When I was at work today hiking around on some islands in the bay, I asked my coworker, "Glenn, look over there [pointing to the sun shimmering off the bay].  Doesn't it look warm?  "It is warm," was his reply.  "Right," I said, "but doesn't it look warm too?"  "Yeah.  It looks like the Gulf of Mexico."  The high today was almost 60F, and the warm sky and sun dancing on the water did indeed look like what I'd picture the Gulf of Mexico to look like.

In other words, if there were bass feeding on sand eels yesterday morning over there across the street, on January 22nd, it wouldn't surprise me this year.  It kind of gets cold for a little bit, but it doesn't hold.  Half the days this month had a high of 50F or better.  To put things in persepctive, the average high should be around 38F, which means a high of 26F is just as normal as a high as 50F, yet we had only one day of 26F and thirteen with 50F or more so far.

I was tempted to call Rick and tell him . . . but I just didn't feel right calling someone at 07:00 in the morning during the final third of January to tell them birds are working.  It's not the calling someone at 07:00 that is wrong, it's the part that it's supposed to be the most brutal cold part of the winter right now, and it's not.  At least it feels good though, so I will take it and be comfortable walking my dog.

2011 Recaptured

2011 was a good year.  We had a great spring with big bass on bunker.  I kind of missed one of the best shots of them on the beach because a drunken Victor wanted to chase them out on the kayak.  We couldn't hook up at all in spite of bass practically banging the boat while we could see people slamming them on shore.  I sold my two kayaks the next month and I will never again go out there on those things!  The best was when Steve, Rick, the rest of the locals and I scored 30lb plus fish on our own one afternoon.  Full on cannonball whitewater blitz of giant bass.  There was good to great big bass action for a solid month.

Summer was hot and flat.  Of course the summer is hot, but we had a near 1930s heat wave, and this summer was 3rd warmest on record for our state and 2nd warmest nationally.  And with the heat came calm weather, no weather, just a long hot and flat summer with no appreciable wind or waves.  Since we couldn't surf, we utulized Will's boat and fished the wrecks for fluke and sea bass almost every weekend.  We sharked pretty hard at night from the beach, being able to fish almost every night during a moon phase because of the calm conditions, but we only had one or two good nights.

The fall fishing season had a late start, but when it rains it pours as they say, and when the bass showed up at the end of October it was historic fishing from then until December.  Keeper bass and sand eels were the main components of the formula, along with generally tranquil weather and easy fishing.  This combination of variables made for the worst crowds I have ever seen in my relatively short career of driving the beach since age 17.  In between the madness I scored some A+ events, the best was a 36 fish morning of mostly keeper fish right across the street from my house with just me and the parking lot locals. 

Here is one picture from each month of 2011.  These are not pictures of us holding up fish because that can be seen elsewhere, rather I chose to show the 'feel' of the months from my experience.  2011 was a good year:

January was a snowy month with record snow in northern areas of the state and Southern New England, but the snow "storms" were missing that key element, that is storminess, and I more than once walked up to the beach to see no waves after getting dumped on.  Snow on the beach is still a pretty sight though.  No fishing this month.

February featured convertables and people sitting on the beach which I found interesting.  A calm warm "heat wave" brought people out when the temperature reached the 70s with light winds and a bright sunny sky.  It never really cooled off signifiantly after, so spring came early this year, starting February 18th.  No fishing.

March doesn't really bring up anything for me.  I think the usual characters were hitting up their usual locations in the backwater to score a few early season fish.  No fishing for me.

April was interesting.  I drove cross-country to California.  This is what the grass looked like in Texas at the start of the Great Drought.  I told my friend as we were driving, "This burnt grass is nothing yet Eric, there is going to be a really bad drought here this year."  Still no fishing.

May gives me memories of pesky onshore winds and low pressures stalling over the Appalachians.  The surf was good but junky, though fun to surf.  I recall the churned up ugly water not being conducive for bass.  I think it may have turned on more at the end of the month, but nothing stands out.

June is when it happened!  The first two weeks featured big bunker and big bass.  I scored a handful of nice events.  The highlights were 30lb+ bass with my best fishing buddies and a couple of big fish all by myself tucked up where no one could see me.  For at least the third year in a row the spring was really good.  By the end of the month it was over like it never even happened, but that's how spring fishing is, very fleeting with a huge reward.

July featured a flash back to the heat waves of the 1930s, and calm weather like never before.  Without any appreciable weather during what is normally the calmest month of the year anyway the beach turned formless.  Jetties were covered and the troughs filled in along the entire strand.  I remember trying to fluke one afternoon in 100F temperatures and bright sunshine, casting my bucktail into water no better than a swimming pool.  Trying a better idea we took to the sea and scored well out on Will's boat.

August was special and featured the first hurricane to landfall in New Jersey since 1903, Hurricane Irene.  We denied evacuations and stayed through.  It was a windy night for sure with tropical storm force winds.  I made it up to the beach in the morning just as the center was passing over and was able to watch a decent storm surge slam into the dunes.  By afternoon the tide was blown out and the waves were pretty good.  Sharking was lackluster, featuring only one good night.  I put the shark buckets away for good the day before the hurricane.

September featured a Dust Bowl in Texas with the state's worst one-year drought in history, worse on the short term than the state's legendary drought in the 1950s.  I told Eric in April that it would be a bad one.  After a sterile summer in the surf, I pretty much gave up on surf fluking, and instead chased a hurricane swell from Katia up to New England.  Our Montauk and Rhode Island trip was again thwarted by lingering warmth, but good waves in Montauk offset the fact that I didn't catch one single fish in the 'Surfcasting Capital of the World'.

October featured weather of a summer that would just not let go.  After chasing around blitzing cocktail bluefish for two weeks I was ready to write this season off before it even began.  And then a miralce occured.  15 bass to 36 inches on a needlefish at night with just my best fishing buddies and myself.  Even though we couldn't repeat that night bite, the epic night kicked off the best bass run for consistent larger fish since before I was born.

November was the month of the year!  I could show you picture after picture of keeper bass until you drool from some motivation.  Instead I will tell you it was interesting how hot the sun felt to the point I was getting sunburn.  36 bass to 34 inches, putting on a show with my metal and teaser combo and needlefish twitch, and scoring a great Thanksgiving Weekend with Tom and Doug made it a month to remember.  With easy fishing and easy weather, the crowds were insane, but the fishing was good enough to only be a little grumpy about it.

December would not let go.  After the main body of fish moved on, there was still enough good to epic action to keep casting all the way to the 31st, though time between sessions became longer.  With bigger fish, and a flat beach since the weather had turned abnormally calm again, I missed not having the end of the season small fish where they should be thing.  I am unabashed about how I enjoy silent fishing for small fish with a small rod and a few select people.  None of that this year.

So far it's halfway through the first month of 2012.  What will May be like, June?  Will the sharks be here this summer?  Will we have fun waves?  Will the beach stop looking like Georgia so we can fluke again?  What will October, November, and December be like?  Until those secrets are revealed, for now I am content to hike the beach with my dog, work on other projects, watch movies, and most improtantly have a normal sleep-wake cycle. 

Happy New Year :)

Not Much of a Winter Yet, Still a Few Fish

You might be able to get them until February this year.  After a mild December that was record warm in Cape May and very warm across the region it might be possible.  Other than a brief intrusion of colder air last week, since then January has felt more like spring, registering a high of 67F on Saturday.  This would be ok for me if the beach shape wasn't so boring, but since it is I'd rather just hear what other people are doing instead of fishing it on my own.  Yes, I have made 100 casts into structure-less water before for two fish and I refuse to have to do that again after a season that featured keeper plus fish everyday.



The high reached 67F on Saturday under the most benign weather.  This was calm weather warmth- there was hardly any wind, swell, front, or weather change.  Calm weather warmth is more typical in the tropics or during summer- not halfway to the North Pole in January.

Donald took advantage of the warm weather on Saturday and hit the beach for the dusk bite.  Not too surprisingly he actually found one, and scored two bass to 25 inches on a crystal minnow.  He told me the first fish hit just at the right time, at the beginning of dusk, just as the water starts to turn pink.  After a lot more casts with nothing, he started towards home, but saw someone else hooked up.  Scooting around far enough away to give the guy some space, Donald nailed one on his first cast at the new spot, again with the crystal minnow.  After a few more casts with no more action and with the impending darkness he wrapped it up.  Not too bad for January 7th.

So as long as we are snowless and mild, and since the bait this year has been sand eels which like to hang around, it might be possible to keep picking fish for a while if you so choose.  One thing that is interesting is looking back into the past because people say that's how you can learn about the future.  Even better, I think, and it's something that people do a lot less, is to learn about the present first.  Then you look back at the past.  Then you look into the future and people will think you're a psychic.  Really you just eliminate your ADD so you can recognize more of what is going on around you.

Here's what the ongoing warmth in New Jersey during December looked like nationally:

Notice that for how unusually warm it was in New Jersey it was even warmer in the High Plains and Canada, which is not on this map.  Usually when it's really warm up north, especially during a winter month, it forces it to be colder and snowier here (like the last two winters when it snowed a lot here and was record warm in Canada) but that didn't happen this year.  Pretty cool, or hot, right?  So we may go on to have a "Year Without a Winter" this winter here in New Jersey even with a lot warmth to the north of us.  The first third of winter has been that way so far anyway.

But what do you think the January fishing was like in the real "Year Without a Winter"?  The winter of 1932.  I get the chills thinking about how it was 87F in Virginia Beach in February during that famous winter that no one knows anything about.  There was never a winter like it before or since in the Eastern United States.

See, if you ever get real focused on the present, then look back at the past, you will find the weather was really screwed up in the 1930s, like out of nowhere.  Now, look at the map above and the December 2011 map and notice the different positions of extra heat in each year.  During the 1932 winter it got cooler as you went north and it was colder than normal in Canada.  This winter so far is rivaling the warmth of the 1932 winter locally, but it's even warmer up north.  The past two years in Canada have featured winters like 1932, but there aren't as many people there to talk about it, and if they are talking about it they must have a hard time getting into our bubble since most people here probably didn't think about that when it was snowing last year.

Since it has been and continues to be so warm in Canada right now on the short term and long term, we're probably not going to have another 1932 winter locally, but that doesn't mean it won't continue mild.  I still wonder what it would have been like to have fished during that historic winter.  Someone has to know.  The thing is there may have been more south winds during that winter, like the weather wasn't as calm, and that would have kept the water cool even though the air was warm. 

So if you're still fishing now in January, know it's not the first time you could do this, but it's still not the average.  Unless 30lbers crash the beach on herring again, the next update will be a summary of 2011's action while I work on tackle maintenance and other projects . . .

The End!

Not that anything I say is official, but I am marking today, January 4th, as my official end of the 2011 fall fishing season.  I walked up to the beach two nights ago after being away from the water for a few days because of the holiday and I could just feel that it was winter.  It was quiet, it was cold, it was dark.

From the information I gathered yesterday, though, it sounds like there are still fish doing a dusk bite not too far from here.  The way I see it now is to let that area have their time- I picture a handful of hardcore regulars enjoying some fish alone, occasionally hooking into a surprisingly large fish for this time of the year.  That's cool with me.  Getting a January fish is pretty sweet, and it's been at least a couple of years since that's been possible.

From big spring bass, to sharks, to a lot of fluking on the boat, and to a ridiculous fall season, I was content to finish bringing in the gear last night.  Winter is a time to rest and recover as well as a time to try out what it's like to live as a semi-normal person.

Now the last time I said it was done 20lb-30lb fish crashed the beach on herring, but that was last week and something like that hasn't repeated since.  After a very mild December (over +6.00F in Atlantic City) a temperature in the upper 10s this morning was a sort of reality check that it's supposed to be winter, even though a high of 55F with mild weather is forecast for this Saturday.  I think the combination of flat surf, westerly winds, and cold nighttime lows, this time, is enough to drive the fish down and out so that if there is a recovery this weekend it will only be a trickle.

A breathtaking sight, literally, greeted me on the coldest morning of the season so far:


Sea smoke!  Sea smoke is essentially a type of fog that forms when a cold wind blows over relatively warmer water given the correct meteorological conditions.  If my face wasn't so cold I would have spent more time watching the smoke dance silently out to sea, but I still stayed long enough to enjoy it.  I remember when I was really young I would run up to the beach on cold clear January mornings to see if the smoke would be there (like I said before . . . live as semi-normal person :) and I still like to do that.

With temperatures in the 10s, sea smoke, and ice and slush on the bay I'm going to say today we're having some winter interjected between our mild spells.  50s again on Friday and Saturday, likely with calm weather since there isn't going to be any waves.  Even so, it's really over this time, at least for me.  Time to buy new line . . . put together gear storage in my truck . . . replace bad hooks . . . send in reels and waders for service . . . it's never really over is it?  Good.