Fun Waves and Shark Sighting
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| A high pressure NE windswell in the middle of the week was caused from a stationary high near Greenland. The fetch of winds was as parallel to shore as could be which produced the maximum angle of NE, meaning fun lefts. With the near 70F water, it reminded me of high pressure NE swell in Florida. |
Doug and I used a day off work to take advantage of a fun looking ENE swell with a W wind. Unlike the swell last weekend, this swell was more from one direction and spaced better, which made more sense. The thing about surfing is, it is not really a team sport so I either like surfing with my friends, people that suck, or alone so I can get the most waves. I chose the first, and Doug and I found a fun looking setup for ourselves.
The tide was a little fat, but the waves were fun and it felt great to surf the warm water without a wetsuit. We're trading off waves, just the two of us, for about two hours. As we're outside waiting for a set, sitting way out there, we're both looking out to the horizon. Then Doug said, "Uhh, do you see that?" Before I even looked, I knew it. There was no set coming so it wasn't in reference to a wave. Damn I thought. Bluefish or herring or something popping the water all around us the whole time. I look where he's looking and see a fin cruise down just under the surface only 20 feet away. Like the time when Tom saw a shark when we were on the kayaks, it was just a look at each other and a mutual unspoken uhh let's go in, like now. Doug and I paddled fast but silent and of course this was the only time of the whole session when there were no waves. Doug showed me his racing heart through his rib cage when we got to shore. I wasn't nervous, but I never looked back, just fixed my eyes on the beach.
He described it as 3-5ft with a black tip. It caught his eye when he saw the fin cruising along the top, alone, and not doing the up and down thing like a dolphin. And then we're out of the water and here is this super fun looking set with three lefts that rip all the way into the beach. My first thought is to forget the shark, let's go down the beach a little and keep surfing! Just then the wind started picking up onshore and the wave quality quickly got crumbly. We scanned with the binoculars but couldn't find it. The wind picked up some more anyway so we called it a day. Then I told Doug that half an hour before the fin I saw a weird swirl down the line on a right I didn't take, where I was like 'what was that'?
Fun Small Blues
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| Shark food showed up everywhere in the surf this week. The next day after the sighting, I went up with a small metal and filled the freezer with small blues and herring for later use. |
Fortunately the shark was small and there was plenty for it to eat since small blues were everywhere. I went up the next morning with a small metal and had one of my most fun mornings in the surf this spring- with 1-2lb bluefish and herring- I was just happy to get a bite going for more than five minutes. I stuffed a plastic bag with the four fish I caught in the 20 minutes I had to fish before work.
One Surf Bass
I walked up the next morning excited I would actually catch something again, having forsaken my big rod for a smaller stick for the small blues. Just to keep things in check, before I started to fish I spied around with the binoculars. Two miles up the beach was a mile long line of bunker with fish ripping through them. Hmm that seems like a better place to fish for small blues. I'll go there. I got there and it was the classic story of the season in the area- fish busting out of range and getting close but not coming in.
Fine. I'll just stand here and fish for blues and herring. The tactic paid off because just as I was going to leave for work, the bunker got pushed close enough to reach on the end of the best cast. I quickly switched to a big yellow Gibbs popper and sent it out. I got just into the school with fish on them. Pop, pop, pop, I was about 15 feet into the clear water around the school when I hooked in. Several minutes later I beached a low 20lb bass, the only one that was caught around me. I packed it in and left on a high note.
Big Boat Bass
In my opinion, the thing about surf fishing is that it can be really disappointing and miserable sometimes. It's like some old grouchy guy, but they just have a charm to them that is infections or something. The fish have been in, more up north it seems, but overall they have been staying out. The kayak is a popular choice, but I gave that up after some thresher sightings, having to carry and transport all the gear, and then what if I'm out there and they hit the beach and I miss a great surf event. I'd rather do one thing and have the good and bad oscillate all around that. Unless the other option is going out on the Frederick's Fish Factory.
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| It takes 10 fish in the boat to equal 1 in the surf, but if there are 0 fish in the surf, then boat fish have no proportional reference, and therefore count. The snag and drop put 8 bass in the boat, 7 of which made it back into the water. The LG formula put Doug's fish and my fish around 35lbs. The rest were 20lb class. |
It was a near perfect confluence yesterday that transpired into a nice mellow day of catching big bass. The fish being there, available time, and good weather. If I had a lot more time than I already do, I would develop some sort of equation to demonstrate how these three variables work together to create a great day of fishing. After a couple snags, in both meanings, that resulted in an emergency swim to shore for another rod :) we found a pod of bunker with some fish in them. I'm not a boat person, but I figured the procedure is 1) find bunker 2) find bunker that looks good 3) snag and drop for one drift 4) if nothing move on and repeat, or keep fishing.
We did just that. My first fish hit immediately as I snagged. At one point there was a double hook up. We hopped around from school to school doing a slow steady pick of fish. It was interesting that the pods of bunker that had fish on them didn't really look much different than the pods that didn't, so it was important to fish them. The total was 8 bass for the boat, 2 30lb fish and the rest 20lb. With great weather- cloudy then sunny and a perfect wind for the drifts- it was a fine day!
The surf report stayed less than stellar, and after the boat when I started chasing around ghost pods of bunker and suspected rain fish around dinner time, I figured it would be good to end it for the day. The fish look this morning looked like the same deal with pods of bunker and some fish on them way outside and quiet inside aside from some possible small blues. It's the greatest plight of the surfcaster that the 'fish are staying out'. I'm going to check it through the day and try it for small blues for the freezer this evening.
