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| July heat was widespread over most of the eastern half of the country, which added to the confusion of when summer 'officially' begins. The temperature reached 90F on Memorial Day in Atlantic City, with mostly cloudless skies. |
Memorial Day Weekend to Labor Day is the 'summer season', when it is officially fashionable to go to the beach, barbeque, and wear summer clothes. June 1st begins the meteorological summer, which includes the months of June, July, and August and ends on August 31st. That's what weather people use for record keeping. I go by that one, and it is a lot easier than trying to remember if summer begins on the 27th or 28th, or the 20th, 21st, or 22nd. Astronomical summer is the one that begins in the final third of June, on the 20th, which marks the longest day of daylight in the northern hemisphere and 24 hours of sun at the North Pole. That ends on September 21st. Basically, when I'm going to the beach, what I'm going to wear, and the weather are most important to me, so I use Memorial Day Weekend to Labor Day and June 1st - August 31st to signifiy summer.
After the seemingly endless spell of dreary E-ESE wind weather last week, better weather was finally forecast right in time for the holiday weekend. The fog slowly lifted, and while there was never really a noticable front, the air began to dry out and heat up. Importantly, the water began to clean up and with each tide the brown tinge from endless swell and rain showers was fading. As soon as the 'clean green' water was back, so were the bunker, and so were some blow ups on the bunker . . . but they looked way out. That's what happens from a waste of nearly ten days of E wind crap weather, the fish move out. Spring fishing is a very delicate fine tuned thing. It can perform big time when the conditions are right, but it is overly sensitive to any protuberance. In the meantime we toured the quintessential Jersey Shore party scene.
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| This Surf Club attendee did a perfect un-staged pose during a drive by video shoot of the crowd. I'm really glad I don't uneccesarily hand out with people that immediately give fingers and attempt to persuade me to obey something, but in Memorial Weekends past epic big bass events happened right in the middle of the Surf Club madness and it was a great time. |
In between surfing a marginal but fun swell leftover from the clogged frontal system that was in the region forever, Will, Doug, and I did numerous runs of the coast searching for fish. Unfortunately, the immediate inshore water appeared lifeless, while offshore a line of bunker extended parallel to shore for most of the hard road coast. 'Maybe they'll come in . . . ' Check another spot and the bunker, with fish on them this time, were still out there, same distance. 'Maybe they'll come in.' Fed up with that, and with Will stoked on freshwater fishing, after a fun surf in old little swell we decided to do some local sweetwater bass action. Will, Olivia, and I dutifully purchased our freshwater fishing licenses on Friday and went the other way of everyone coming down. Our first spot was a success and held a few fish, enough to get a fix.
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| This was not the main event, regardless of what the shirt is saying. |
More small wave fun surfing and more driving around watching bunker a mile off the beach came to a head on Monday morning when we spotted fish busting through bunker at the end of the spot check. Duh, go out on the boat! Hey, it was a holiday, so it was fine to take a holiday from beach fishing especially since it wasn't going to work. Will called his dad, the captain of the family vessel, and with a beautiful day ahead the arrangement was made immediately. A fine crew of four set sail around 10:00 am in search of big bass.
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| It was like an aquarium out there. Clean green water and miles of bunker broken up into pods. |
It didn't take long to find bunker in a situation like the school pictured above. Step 1: find bunker. Step 2: find bunker that have fish on them. Overall Lesson: bring correct and extra gear. I thought I would be able to snag and drop easily enough with a conventional, but it turned out being harder than on the kayak since the bunker were spooking and spreading from the drift of the boat. So I switched to my duck spinning reel that would go 'quack quack' with each turn of the handle. Will seemed to be doing okay with a new Century and Van Staal set up and was clearly going to be the winner this day.
After picking through bunker that had a few sprays, but without a hook up, Will mentioned going south and so we went. A new drift was made on top of a nice school that was real tight and finning. It looked fishier than other schools somehow. I snagged and it didn't take long, maybe a minute, before it felt like I had hooked a submarine. Fish on! Wow it felt like a huge bass! Line poured off the duck reel. The run was so smooth there was no chance it was a blue. I am not exaggerating, it felt like one of the bigger bass I ever almost caught. Damn. After a ten minute battle, I saw the familiar golden back and stripes, fifteen feet from the boat. And then I heard the fortunately less familiar but always poorly timed sound, a big whaackk! I blame it on the duck reel. It was going 'quack quack' through the whole fight which killed my style of pressuring the fish. The big one that got away! Five minutes later the reel broke clear off the stem while casting to the bunker. Later it fell victim to a sledgehammer in the driveway.
Will's story was much more successful:
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| If you want to catch fish you have to fish where the fish are! BeachFishing getting mobile. Will getting it done with a ~30 pounder. |
Wow those spring summer spring ocean fish can fight! All the parabola of the rod was used in getting this fish to the boat, as well as gymnastic skills in getting from the front of the boat to the back of the boat for a safe landing on the deck. The clean green water big spring ocean fish are well worth it, aren't they? It was all smiles from a successful catch and release. Two weeks ago, Will was saying something about how it would be nice if he could get a big bass on Memorial Day Weekend. Isn't it funny the fishing sucked for two weeks and he was the only one in the crew that caught the only fish this weekend? I'm still trying to figure out what possessed me to bring that stupid duck reel and no back up.
This is the season now. I just got a call from Donald, "I have a school of bunker about 120 yards out. Big fish just went through them. I looked around and I'm going to wait here. If they come in you're only going to get one ring." Hard but fresh SSW wind, clean water, outgoing tide, and blowing up bass . . . I know where I'm going . . .
