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| The scene looked very tropical on Friday, but there were no fish. |
. . . If we find good water . . . Well I worked pretty hard to find okay water. Vinny, Jesse, and Jeff, two of them at least, worked extraordinarily hard to find the same okay water. An imposing line of 8 rods were set up, and we waited. And waited. A few small dogfish made the rods move, but there were no hard take downs. A couple of hours passed without anything before Doug's rod went down. He set up on the beast and it took him south, then north into lines in the water. Get them out! All of a sudden it was like some parallel universe.
Vinny was cranking his bait in as fast as he could and was startled when he hooked up. He drove it home hard, so hard that when his line snapped, he tumbled over backwards into the sand. That was good for a laugh! Doug continued to battle, but we could see it was a big ray. Damn. At least when shark fishing the trash fish are somewhat exciting. Jesse handed off the camera to bring in his line. Doug snapped off and when Jesse brought his line in there was a skate on it. It was a different 10 minutes. Encouraged by the brief action we fished hard to 12:30am, but it wasn't happening. Will commented that he didn't like how the south wind was still blowing into the night.
The final unmotivated, tired, when are you ever going to be home night was cancelled by a severe thunderstorm . . .
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| A shelf cloud and gust front associated with a severe thunderstorm moved quickly across the bay around 7:45pm. Minutes later winds were gusting to 50mph+, torrential rain was coming in the house, and hardly a second would pass without lightning. |
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| Mammatus clouds were found in the wake of the storm. These breast-like clouds are indicative of a severe thunderstorm. |
The storm was a pretty classic summer severe thunderstorm for the area. When the gust front arrived winds picked up from the west turning the bay into a white froth, rain was falling in sheets, and lightning was reasonably scary, but it was all over in 30-40 minutes as the storm moved swiftly to the south and east. For a broader view, the Mid-Atlantic has been the target of some potent squall lines in the last week due in part to flow around a persistent high pressure area over the South that is making farming very difficult.
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| Only two states, Maine and New Hampshire, do not contain an area of drought or abnormal dryness. 48 of the other states do. Heat and drought comparisons are being made to the 1930s and 1950s droughts, the worst droughts in United States history. Squall lines have a better chance of occurring in the Mid-Atlantic when drought is in the South. |
So when there's no fish I like to go into the weather because the two things sort of go together anyway. This was especially apparent watching the boaters in the bay rushing back to dock before the squall hit last night. Part of catching fish- and doing it again- means having an awareness of the surrounding environment. Locally, a cold front is forecast to pass from due north, which means it's struggling, but hopefully the temperature will moderate to average this week. The next moon for shark fishing is as follows . . . Provided there are no huge waves, seaweed, upwelling, thunderstorms, obligations, bad wind, bad sandbars . . .
Jul 18/Wed ------- H7:39pm
Jul 19/Thu* ------- H8:14pm
Jul 20/Fri ---------- H8:54pm
Jul 21/Sat --------- H9:43pm
