Day Bite!

When the ocean is on it's not the time to slow the energy down with words.  Want to stay in the moment.  So while it seems fitting to tell a tale about a pretty crazy day bite of sharks, I don't want to poke holes with language.  Keep the high going . . . !  Waves, waves, thousands of sharks, areal sharks jumping into the air, business is booming, waves, waves . . . time to experience . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We tried to repeat it, but today the fishing was interrupted by yet another swell.  Yet another consecutive weekend SINCE JUNE 8th with rideable waves!  So had to go surfing instead on some fun 2-4ft rising swell.  Offshore and waves tomorrow . . . keep it going . . . best summer ever . . . forget working . . . on the high . . . time to live fast!

 

 

 

 

 

Eve of the 2013 Sharking Season

Finally the water has warmed up after all the south winds in June, meaning sharking is within the realm of possibility.  Along with the very warm water, the rays showed up en masse this week.  The creatures put on a show of 'fins' and wakes in the surf that a casual observer would have assumed was a shark invasion without further investigation.  Though rays are not sharks, I believe they are in the same family, and it has been said that rays and sharks often travel together.  It also looks like a shoal of sand eels is in tight to the beach.  I'm not sure if sharks eat sand eels, but what they are certainly good for is attracting higher members of the food chain.

The full moon- my favorite moon- is on Monday.  This makes the best tides for sharking from Sunday through Thursday.  That evening/early night high tide is enough reason to fish, but of course there are the other variables as always.  With the forecast as it is right now, I will offer what I think about these variables and how they relate to the possible productivity of the fishing.

Surf height forecast:

The surf forecast looks so-so.  I prefer flat or a very small swell, weak enough so that using a 4oz sinker is is possible.  It's not like I have been sharking for a hundred years, but all of the crazy nights happened when it was flat or with a small swell and not much happened when it was rougher.  Monday looks like the best day given the forecast, while the surf on Wednesday is close to the larger threshold.  Overall, it looks like it will be possible to fish on most days with just some inconvenience from the surf.

Wind forecast:

 



 

The water was very warm last week, but the south-southwest winds today may cool it down some.  But the lighter north wind on Sunday and an east wind on Monday are excellent for warming the water.  Given the surf height and east wind forecast, Monday is looking like the best night so far.  Southy winds are back on Tuesday and Wednesday, but may remain light enough so as not to disturb the water too much.

Thunderstorms forecast:

Many a fishable night with excellent conditions has been lost to the thunderstorm.  It's not that the fish care about thunderstorms, it's that setting the hook with a graphite rod pointed straight into the air during an electrical storm on an open beach is really not a good move.  Lightning is serious, and the thing about summer thunderstorms is that once they get to the ocean they can start to move in weird directions or slow down or build back and this is especially the case when upper-level steering currents are weak.  A bite last year was aborted due to an approaching thunderstorm.  It really sucks to have to leave the beach when you're getting hit by sharks, but I still think that's better than getting hit by lightning.

The thunderstorm forecast looks fairly typical for this time of the year, being 30-40% chances.  So that means it's always something to be aware of, but it's not worth cancelling an event until it's about time to go because the chances are also fairly good that the night will be clear and the thunderstorms will be somewhere else.  With a forecast like this, the call for whether to fish or not to fish has to be decided at nearly the last minute.

If Monday has the smaller surf, east winds, and if electrical bolts aren't being hurled from the sky it might be a pretty good night.  Thursday is my second choice.  As always, this is subject to change.  It's not because those in weather "never know anything" or "the weatherman never get it right" it's because the short-term weather forecast is constructed by the input of a vast number of atmospheric variables, and even with the huge quantity of input it is quite impossible to entirely model the atmosphere since it is impossible to collect every atmospheric variable at every location on earth at every second.  So I'm impressed the short-term forecasts are as accurate as they are taking into account all the data gaps, but that is just my take on it.

Hopefully there will finally be some pictures of fish coming soon.  Enough of the lean times!

Best June Surf in Memory

Did you ever have a time when things get better and better and you say 'I can't believe it could get any better'?  Well I can believe there is no limit to how much better things can get because that's what I saw happen.  June 2013, compared to other months of June in my memory, has had the best surf of any month of June.  Consistent and varying were the most accurate adjectives to describe the swells rather than weak and southerly which is more typical for June when the Bermuda High begins to dominate.  A pattern set up for waves on the weekends with the swells lasting into the workweek, or there was also an occasional workweek swell.  And the waves broke as good as ever with the new sand bars made by 'The Storm'.

One of the best days of June surf ever

When the waves are good catching fish is the farthest thing from my mind, but it's not like there were many fish around to cause a distraction from getting barrelled.  From what I hear, this month the fishing was really bad, capping off a lousy spring season.  Father's Day was the best day for me- I almost had them do it all to myself on an isolated beach, but it was quite an anti-climax like someone pulled the plug in a bathtub.  But other than serious empathy for fellow people who fish or make a living from people doing that, when its 6-8ft peaks with a straight west wind I might as well be on another planet somewhere.

June 2013

There was a pattern this month for a more northerly Bermuda High, which allowed larger and more consistent fetches of southeasterly winds to develop on its western side.  This 'flow' was often enhanced by storm systems that entered from the west and stalled.  So when the weather repeats in this way, it means a lot of waves and a lot of cooler water and apparently no fish.

June 2013 was quite similar to June 2003.  Too wet in the east and too dry in the west.

Preliminary data shows June 2013 usurped the title for wettest June in New Jersey from 2003.  Both months were similar in that the east was too wet and the west was dry with a heat wave.  The heat wave in the west this June was more severe- Death Valley, CA had the Earth's warmest June temperature on record.  What followed June 2003 was Hurricane Isabel in September.  Hurricane Isabel was considered the worst hurricane in parts of the Mid-Atlantic since the 1933 Chesapeake-Potomac Hurricane, a benchmark storm.  It seemed the Bermuda High tended to be more northerly and weaker on its western side in 2003 like this year, making an open door for an Atlantic storm.

Isabel approached a weakness in the western portion of the Bermuda High, which allowed the hurricane to turn west-northwestward on 13 September, northwestward on 15, September, and north-northwestward on 16 September.  The latter motion would continue for the rest of Isabel's life as a tropical cyclone.  Isabel Report

But outside of the surf and weather, as far as fishing, the sharks are the next chance for it as I consider the 'bass season' to be well over.  The best moon days- not counting the multitude of atmospheric variables that override or enhance fishing with the moon are as follows:

NEW       JUL 07-11
FULL      JUL 21-25
NEW       AUG 04-09
FULL      AUG 19-24

It looks as if the swell will fade to the background and so there may be a chance for fishing the new moon next week.




 

Casting for a Bass

I've heard a good number of people say that catching a big fish is easy in the spring, and like they do that eye roll and sighing motion as they say it, in a partly arrogant manner.  To me, having the perfect ratio of bait and predator, in close enough, then to blitz, and then to find a spot amongst the human element of the blitz sandwiched between a bunch of nuts heaving hooks and metal past your head, and then to hook and fight a huge fish and not tangle or have it come off or lose it getting over the lip in the wash, and to have your arms shaking and your heart pounding and your voice suddenly a lot louder, is to me quite a miraculous event.  Though some have found that this spring, without an event like that pending Will, Doug, and I had to do it the second best way- read the water and make some well-sighted blind casts. 

A lonely beach and fog- if 'it happened' no one else would have been there to see 'it'.  And I'm sure we would have had a damn good time alone in the forest.

At first sight of the water, my brain automatically went into computer fish mode.  How many blitzes have I had in the fog?  Not many.  What about after days of south wind?  Not good.  Brown water.  Eh.  Do I see bait?  No, nothing obvious, look closer, no.  2-3ft 'wet' south swell.  Don't remember much good in these conditions.  The wind coming off the water is chilly, uh too much upwelling.  Okay . . . we're going to look around for bait and better water.  I want smaller waves, a warmer wind, greener and clearer water.  That's where the life will be, and that's where we'll just walk down to the water and make some casts with the most likely lures.  That is the best chance to catch a fish today.  Until I can figure out a way to do better than what I think is the best I can do, I guess I'm stuck with that.

Success! Doug pictured with a nice casting bass on a white surface swimmer.

Before we started our adventure, earlier in the day I had a feeling of where it would be best to settle in and cast.  When I saw the cleaner water, some dolphins, a possible school of bunker a distance off the beach, and a nice sandbar in the place I was thinking about earlier in the day I thought good.  Let's cast it!  Doug, I'm going to use the wood surface swimmer, go real slow and maybe one will come up on it.  It didn't take very long before a fish stopped my swimmer right behind a wave.  I think I just had a hit.  Cast again. 

While retrieving I heard a hoot to my right.  Doug was on!  That's a bass, look at the way the rod is working.  After a nice fight, Doug sanded a slender but healthy looking 30 inch or so striped bass.  Yes!  I looked around- there were no obvious signs of life in the water- and there was even a rainbow.  Oh yeah, if we get into a subtle bite on swimmers, oh that would be great!  Shut up insatiable part, isn't this nice enough? Yes, yes it is.  Sometimes all it takes is one- and it doesn't even have to be mine.