"Still Life of the back of my truck" by Alexi

   

Strangest fishing trip?

At the moment when I passed through the threshold that separates the magical land of IBSP into the mundane and routine real world of the rest of New Jersey, I had in the back of my truck: a freshly dead rabbit, six bluefish up to 15lbs, (also freshly dead), a big plastic container full of wet and stinky clothes, another big plastic bucket full of kayak fishing gear, (much of which I've just been carrying around and not using), a crate with fishing gear, three rods and reels, half of a cheese hoagie, three empty double shot cans of coffee, and innumerable empty water bottles among other detritus collected from seasons of fishing.  In a convoluted backwards fashion I will try to tell the story of these items.

    RABBIT:

    As we were driving down the one road in the park a rabbit decided to run into the truck in front of us.  It wasn't crushed, but looked badly injured as it tried to get out of the road.  We drove ahead and mulled over the tragic event we had witnessed.  We decided the right thing would be to turn around drive back and kill it... I wasn't sure that I could, but Steve was.  When we arrived at the scene of the accident the rabbit was lying in the middle of the road, already dead.  I asked Steve if he knew how to dress a rabbit.   He said he could skin it... (He'd figured the rest out later by watching youtube.)

FISHING:


    The six bluefish were caught mostly on topwater plugs in the back of IBSP.  We had been out since the day before hunting for big bass with eels in all of the deep water accessible by kayak from the launch.

drifting eels

 We drifted during slack tide, but didn't get a single hit until very late at night.  We were both completely exhausted, and so the tents went up and our bodies rested.

    We slept in and got some well needed rest.

view from my tent

 The current was about to switch when we got to snake ditch, and Steve quickly hooked up with a blue.  That was the confidence booster we both needed.  Not too long after I was getting hits on a smack it jr.  Over the next couple of hours we had fairly consistent action of blues in the 10-15lb range, mostly on top-water plugs.

Steve's first hook up in the AM that got us going

Alien

I lost this smack-it Jr soon after this

 I wanted three big bluefish for the smoker, but with all of the reports of giant blues, and me not catching any earlier in the week, I was beginning to wonder, "were bluefish not as dumb a fish as I thought they were?"  and here they were, dumb as ever....Thank goodness!

double hook-ups galore

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Steve's night bass on eel from the previous trip

If someone asked me how fishing was before this trip I would say "our fishing trips have been SLOW"...We had gone out for an overnight earlier in the week. I was skunked, Steve got two short bass on eels.

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On this last trip I had two bass earlier in the day, before Steve showed up.  He had pneumonia and wasn't going to fish at all, but what else is there to do?   And so he showed up while I was tossing soft plastics in Snake Ditch.

Day bass on soft plastic

smallest bass I've caught in Barnegat...AND it has a clear bite mark across it

We had been tossing theories about why the fishing was slow back and forth all week like a well moistened joint.  In the end, maybe we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I know it looks like we catch a lot of fish, but we also fish for 24 hours per trip.

I'll leave this off here with two more pictures:

Home in time to clean

and grill the rabbit