Steady Dawn and Dusk Action

I’ve been doing some thinking, not a lot, and reasoned that it’s like a fish farm up there right now.  It’s like the miles of sand eels on the back of the bar are grass and the bass come in and graze at their leisure.  There’s even some “cows” in the mix (I never like using that term) as I’ve heard reports of some 20lb+ fish still being taken.  For the fall, a 20lb+ fish is pretty serious. 

I was fortunate enough to score some well timed dawn and dusk action on Monday and Tuesday before it slowed off where I was on Wednesday.  Monday night was the best bite when Donald, Tom F, and I scored about 4-5 bass each in about 40 minutes using plugs.  Of those fish about one third of them were keepers.  The bass were very finicky on Tuesday morning, but it was good to see a lot fish around even though they wouldn’t bite.  Wednesday was slow so I slept in this morning, and of course probably missed something.

It was just the birds and me this week, or Donald and Tom F.  We had a great time banging out fish by ourselves with light plugs on Monday evening.

After hearing a report of Jim K knocking out 18 fish, I almost felt reluctant about saying this is the final third, especially since there are still plenty of larger fish in the mix.  What it is about this year, though, is that it feels very lazy and stationary.  Most of the beaches are a lot less structured than normal, so there hasn’t really been a move up and down the beach thing hitting edges which can be fun with sand eels. 

It’s kind of been more like go up to your spot and cast over a sand bar that looks like you’re in Georgia and if the fish are biting you’ll get them. Throw metal, throw metal, throw metal, repeat, and repeat, repeat.  Donald even told me a story about how he was nailing bass on a Yozuri behind people that were like robots throwing their metals out to the Azores.  The way the style of fishing has been has made it very easy to become a sloth dullard, making it hard for some to adapt to even a small change of conditions. 

One last fish for Tom and one for me is it for food fish this year.  The Daiwa SP Minnow has been a hit this week. 

The 34 incher pictured above sure felt heavy when I beached him.  When I walked the fish up to the top of the berm for storage it felt like I was carrying a sack of lead.  Lifting it into the back of my pick-up truck bed was a chore, as was carrying it to my deck for fillet work.  When I started the cleaning process I found out immediately why the fish felt like it was stuffed with cement:

Inside of it were 75 fresh undigested sand eels!  And that fish, being greedy, went for one more and it cost him his life.  Of course if I wasn’t there, the bass would have been fine, but another sand eel would not have been.  Figure out that riddle.  Instead of balancing the complexities of the food web, I decided it would be more delightful to spend a few minutes counting the sand eels one by one.  75!

Following another intrusion of mild air today, a pretty good west wind is forecast tonight and tomorrow which should lower the air temperature back to normal, and flatten out the surf as well.  Dawn, dusk, and night Friday has good potential, and so does Saturday morning, especially since it will be calm enough to throw small plugs and floating Needlefish.  I’d really like to get some bites using light plugs on my 8’ rod over the next two days.  It’s been enough of the championship long distance metal casting.