Here, Fishy, Fishy, Fishy!

Last night I put my son, Handsome, to bed and took a little nap with him. It wound up being a little more than an hour. I left there at about 10:30 an headed for home to get all my stuff ready. I got everything prepared in advance, and in the Jeep. That way when it was time to go I could just get in and turn the key. I sat down and wrote my blog, and if you read it then you know that yesterday I was writing about having a hard time staying awake at the library.

Ha! Little did I know...

So anyway, I finished and posted yesterday's blog entry and then I cruised about the internet for a while, just kind of killing time. I watched an episode of “Archer” the show that's on FX, had myself a sandwich, and drank some Hydrive. I kept checking the time. Just in case, I set the alarm clock. If I did fall asleep, I didn't want to over-sleep, and miss my chance. I did use that alarm to get myself another half-hour nap before 2 am arrived. That's when I got in the jeep and took off running.

Fishing for Stripers.

I got to my spot, well, as close to my spot as you can get to with a car, and walked the rest of the way in. A mile up the railroad tracks, in the dark, at 2:30 in the morning. Alone. Boy, it's a good thing I don't have a vivid imagination, huh?

Right.

So I made my way to my spot, and stayed there for three hours. High tide was at 4:35am, so I had an hour and a half of the incoming tide and the same for the outgoing. I fished two different spots in the area, one for the incoming, one for the outgoing, moving all my gear on the slack tide. At each spot I cut up a bunch of old bait I had, chopping it pretty fine and trying to chum the area with it. My hands got fairly nasty, and I dulled up my knife doing all this.

My reward for all this effort, the drive, the hike, the chumming of the waters, the keeping two rods running?

Not a damn thing.

In the past in this area I have seen crabs, a few eels, tons of baitfish, one shark (which I tried to catch, but with no luck), not to mention quite a few Stripers.

This morning, nothing.

The residents in the area, if they were awake early enough, were treated to the sight of me standing at the shoreline, throwing handsfull of chopped up fish-parts into the sea, and calling “Here, fishy, fishy, fishy!”

It didn't work.

The saying goes that there is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot. I left the house with the intention of doing the former, but wound up doing the latter. And the best part was showing up to work on about 2 hours of sleep, reeking of fish (from cutting up the bait) and having people ask me how I did.

“The only bites I got were from the mosquitoes,” I said. They look at my glassy eyes and they notice my hands, scalded red from scrubbing the bait-stink off as much as I can.

“Well, I don't know how you do it. You wouldn't catch me out there like that!”

No. Apparently I don't catch anything out there like that. Thanks for reminding me. I don't tell them that it takes a special breed of idiot to go stand on the shore in the middle of the night, hoping to God it turns into fishing.

I can't wait to go again!

Talk to you later!