Saturday night wasn't a good night for sharking if the only goal is catching a shark, but it was possibly the safest night to go swimming in the ocean at night. The meteorological and social alignment of conditions on Saturday night was about as good as it can get. The E swell was done, the water was clean and weed free, green, warm, the tide was at a decent time, there was no chance of thunderstorms and the air temperature was perfect. Bait was plentiful, excessive, the best chum pot design yet was deployed.
And then a great crew consisting of Vinny, Jesse, and Jeff came down and added more smell to the rods tended by Doug, Will, and myself. Timmy arrived after work and added a 7th rod to what was likely the largest agglomeration of bunker oil, chum, and bluefish chunks on the entire Jersey Shore that evening. The glow tips were on, the wire-mono rigs were tied, and the sand spikes were driven into the hard sand with a mallet. The coolers were filled with enough bait to keep 7 rods going for hours with a hot bite.
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| Fishing was cancelled for Friday night, but the weather looked much better Saturday. Summer thunderstorms are yet another hurdle that also includes dealing with disappointment and gigantic 'trash fish'. |
I arrived at the beach around 7:00pm and set up the camp and chum slick. The method was cutting up bunker and bluefish into small pieces and mixing them with bunker oil, as well as putting bunker oil on the hull of the kayak. Once I had a plastic bag worth, I paddled out in the oil and blood coated kayak to throw handfuls of fish parts into the water. The most important thing is not being concerned about what could possibly come from sitting on a 10ft lure, it's getting the placement of the chum to work with the wind. After about three trips over an hour, oil slick water extended from the beach to about 200 yards out- perfect. Will arrived with the chum pot right at dark and set it just outside of casting range. A large buoy marked its place and we couldn't help but think of it being like a big bobber.
The first lines went out around sunset, and Vinny and crew were due to arrive shortly. Once they made it and the rigging was done there was a solid wall of 6 lines. It was finally time to relax from the hours of prep work, but it didn't take long for something to jiggle my rod and make the line slack. The sharks don't always slam the rod- just as often it's tap-tap-slack so it's important to be diligent. I got the slack out, felt the weight and hammered it home! A few minutes into battle without any shaking begs the question, is it a sting ray? Followed by I think it's a ray, no, wait, maybe a shark, no definitely a ray, it's a ray, wait, no it could be a shark, I can see it, it's a ray. It's not the same as those fake scratch-off tickets, but fighting a ray before it's positively a ray is still a thrill. This one was a butterfly ray that had at least a 5ft wing span!
Back to re-baiting and waiting, drinking a few beers, talking, re-setting lines, impatient active bait fishing. Timmy arrived and added another rod to the chain, but couldn't break the stiffness of the rod tips. Later on, however, Doug's rod silently bent in half. Go go go! Doug set up on his fish and headed south. Lines out! Lines out! The lines were cleared and everyone assembled around Doug. I put the backpack on. Too bad when we discovered it was another ray, but it was still a nice battle before it broke the leader off in the wash.
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| The only off-factor I could think of- I know somtimes it's just the fish aren't there- but it seems the beach profile has evolved into a very gentle slope which means there isn't much deep water. |
So Saturday night was officially the safest night to go swimming in the dark. A chum slick, a chum pot, 7 lines in the water, but not one shark or potential shark over half of the night. I wanted to keep the energy high, but the nagging thought I had was that the water was possibly too shallow since the beach has taken on a gently sloping profile. There wasn't a problem casting 'over the bar' because there wasn't one. The problem was that without a bar there is no 'back of the bar' which is a real nice structure to have. I much prefer the steep slope on the backside of the bar to a flat bottom, but they get sharks in Little Egg Harbor (the bay) from what I hear so maybe it doesn't matter, but it still felt off. The shallow bottom far out was affirmed when Will and I did a fluke session in the kayak the next day. It didn't take much line to get to the bottom. A keeper fluke didn't mind it, though, which made for a pretty nice Sunday lunch.
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| The small blues/bait gathering bite was hot at least. Sand eels are holding the fish in the surf. |
At least the small bluefish bite was really good. It's a lot more fun to catch bait then to buy it, especially when the bait is acquired with a rod and reel. The blues were in all day on sand eels and rain fish. A 1oz sting silver and 1oz Hopkins filled up the cooler in no time, but the sharks never emptied it. So there is the summer supply of bait for the crab traps. Shark fishing stands so far at 0 for 2. The next moon is the full moon on 4th of July week. What would stoke the tourist population more, a 120lb shark on the beach or hecho en China fireworks? The mystique of the shark supersedes culture divide.
