Still on Standby

It seems like every time we get together on the beach now we’re talking about how we used to catch fish.  Now I have a lot fewer years on this planet, but I always remember action being in gear by Columbus Day, which is usually around the 12^th.  Of course, it wasn’t summer during those times like it was this year.  Halloween and Election Day are usually fantastic days, and memories of red hot fishing on Election Day stand out for me since I have off work that day.  I’ve always had a love-hate with Thanksgiving, since the call of having to go eat dried out turkey (sorry Aunt Sharon) would often pull me away from the best day of the year.  Christmas too, I remember being late to a few Christmas dinners because of a hot blitz or good bite.  This year, so far, the fishing is severely short of the first benchmark holiday and it isn’t looking good for holiday two either. 

What brief fishing there was this week was more like spring fishing- the big bunker thing, which, well it’s fun, but it’s really only fun in the spring where it belongs.  Part of my misery here, though, is because I missed the only good bite this week.  Steve and Rick managed to score a moderate blitz of big bluefish on big bunker, in pouring rain and squally east winds, which are just the right conditions to get a bite going during the fall, as explained in the northeast wind event section of the Understanding Weather page of the website.  The big blues pushed bunker right onto the beach in the growing surf, and the guys scored a handful of fish before the action waned to a pick.  They said the total event lasted for only two hours, but they had a nice smile about it so it was nice to see someone getting their fix.

Since I haven’t had a fix yet, I will throw some gloomy statistics out there:

Steve and Rick scored fish for 2 hours.  There are 168 hours in a week.  2 divided by 168 equals 0.0119.  0.0119 times 100 equals 1.19.  1.19 can be rounded to 1.  That means the fishing was good for 1% of the time this week.  1% of the time this week it was worth fishing.  That means 99% of the time there was nothing going on.  99% of the time was spent talking about how we used to catch fish. 

But the great thing about fall is the potential and hope.  It could be going off right now as I type this . . . maybe . . . hopefully . . . probably not . . . but it could be . . .