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