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