One Last Fluke, by Alexi

     By the time this picture was taken Steve had stood on his kayak site casting flats, drifted and caught fluke (shorts) in snake ditch, and had been to the inlet and lost a big fluke due to a faulty knot.  A thing he says he despises.  I will vouch for this.  If there is anyone who loves drifting into the ocean, or into rocks, or into other boats, or into a rip while tying a knot it's Steve.  He's meticulous about it to say the least.  The dropper loop is a tricky thing.  I've had this knot slip many times.  Steve examined his line after he lost the "big fluke" and determined that it was his dropper loop that failed.       

Harvest Moon

     Now as for me, well I have grown to utterly HATE teasers and dropper loops in the past year.  Also I had denounced gulp because my last three trips I've caught nothing but short fluke, and had all of my gulp tails bit off quickly.  (Another $8 down the mouths of small blackfish and blues.)   So it is just my fate to catch and land a nice 21" fluke in the inlet on none other than the teaser hook with a gulp swimming mullet on it.  (Because I had refused to buy gulp, I was like a smoker who says he quit.  I bummed gulp from Steve.)  What should also be noted is my technique: although I had caught many short fluke using the Skinner technique (rapid vertical jigging) this fish I caught using my own technique- self jigging.  This is when I throw my rod in the rod holder and let the waves and the kayak do the jigging for me.  (I don't think it was this technique that caught the fish, but the pause and drop of the gulp.)

     After this picture was taken I trolled a pink tube-n-worm along the sedges in Oyster Creek Channel in the hopes of catching the elusive weakfish (a boater had said he had lost a big one at the boat the other day.  I didn't find his lost fish).  I went to do what I know- what I had so much fun doing a few nights earlier around sunset-  trolling tube-n-worm in snake ditch during slack tide along the sedges and catching several 20" bass.  I know that someday soon, the bass will get bigger.  Not literally of course, those 20" fish aren't going to grow.  Their parents will be showing up.  And when they do, I want to be there.

21" fluke

sept 5, sedges report and rant By Alexi

    Labor Day.  What a difference it makes.  Post labor day fishing at IBSP in the sedges is serene to say the least.  The crowds are gone.  The osprey have started their migration south.  The grass is at it's tallest, and is turning golden.  It's like a drug.  It's what I NEED.   It wasn't a trip about what I caught or what I caught it on.  It was a solo kayak journey into (almost) complete darkness.  New moon.  Overcast, then absolutely clear two hours later.  Windy as all hell.  Current in OCC just ripping, but who knew?  I couldn't even tell I was moving until I looked down at my GPS.  But I don't want to talk about the fishing.  I want to talk about fishing.  What compels us to do it?  For me it's the utter calmness of it all.  Sure there's the challenge, but I know what to expect.  I know that the big bass and blues aren't in the bay right now.  I know most of the big fluke have moved out of the bay as well.  So, why fish?  I think it's the need to escape the city.  To get away from "civilization."  To have time and peace and quite to think (and to fish)

When the sun is low on the horizon and it's overcast, the sedge grass to the east glows

     I arrived to relatively calm conditions.  I knew it would be windy, but as the weather's wind predictions have been wrong recently, and the two sites I look at for weather were changing their predictions in opposing directions (on weather.com it was windier, on weatherunderground it was less windy) I decided it was worth a go at fishing the sedges. 

     I arrived at area 21 at IBSP around 4:30.  I drifted by the launch looking for fluke and found none.  I went to snake ditch.  It was impossible to drift because the wind was opposite of the current.  But, I was able cast from my kayak as if I was casting from land. I did this for a while to no avail.  I started to give up on the fluke, and began to transition to bass/ blues. I caught two bass on the small bass assasins, and a third on haddon spook just after sunset. 

three of these little guys, all around 20" tagged one of them

     Then the wind picked up.  There was no moon which made it difficult to see.  I drifted into Oyster Creek Channel, in pitch blackness,  for a second just to realize that the current was ripping out there.  

     I paddled back through one of the new creeks we've found that connect to the shallow water by the launch.  It was windier and weedier than it had been all evening so I fished back to the launch.  Just at around 10:15, when I arrived at the launch, the wind had pretty much stopped.  

as the sunset, the wind picked up