Dec. 19th report, still fish, still adventures, still mistakes...

   Sometimes, time in the car on the way to the shore passes quickly.

  Conversations about diving, and bridge fishing help it along so it seems like we were never in the car at all.   High tide was around 1 p.m. and were fishing around 11:30.  Perfect and not so perfect, because what it meant was that low tide would be around sunset.
    I had one on the jetty probably around 2 p.m. and that was it for the daytime.  It was about 20".

Frustration started to set in as sunset passed.  Even though this should be the best time to fish, with the strong west wind and a strong moon, there was little water to fish in.  We decided to try to fish by the lighthouse.
     There was a light shining on the water, and a bass lurking around the edges.  I had thought that I saw it roll, but wasn't sure.  I thought I had bites on my bass assassin.  Steve fished that spot, and he had a strike on his rigged eel.  Next cast, same spot, slower retrieve, fish on.  I felt good for Steve, he had put in thousands (well, maybe not quite)  of hours without catching a fish, so it was well deserved.  We left pretty quickly due to some dubious circumstances involving temporary fences with signs about construction, if you get my drift.  We decided to try to fish one more spot....A bridge on the way back.
    We took a look, and decided there would be no way to walk a big fish to shore, and we don't have a bridge gaff.  So, we took a look and found easy access from the side of the bridge.  Also, we noticed lots of top water activity.   Sploosh, splish.  We saw small bait.  The rigged eels weren't working.  The bass assassin wasn't working.  My mostly white teasers weren't working.  There were fish at our feet, and we couldn't catch them.  I put on a black teaser and starting getting bites.  After a couple of casts I had a nice 22" bass on.  After many snags and re-tying and losing gear I had a keeper on a very small black fin-s.  Then another short on a small paddle tail.  Then Steve also hooked up with a short on the fin-s.    It was getting late, so we left  them biting, (always a good feeling.)
    It was classic bass lurking in the shadows of the bridge sipping small bait off the surface.

    In general, we feel like we're constantly learning about Barnegat Bay fisheries and the areas we concentrate our fishing in.  Last year we gave up on fishing in the bay after one failed effort at Snake Ditch.  This fall we were forced to search out new places to fish, and have been able to consistently find fish, and some more than 28" well into Dec.  But maybe that's a topic for another blog entry.

As we were on the highway on the way back we heard a small yet clear thump at the side of the car. Not to go too much into the details, apparently Steve's $20,000 combo never made it IN the truck, just sat on TOP of the truck for ALMOST all the way home.