Two Fluke Island Beach

I fished for about an hour. My wife and I go to Island Beach State Park with our black Lab, Sadie, twice a year. It's pretty much a lay-out-on-a-towel beach day, but I bring a rod along. Sunday, the surf was too rough to interest me, until it calmed down as you can see in the photo. 

Sometimes there's fluke out there. Sometimes not. Once I caught 12. On Sunday, I caught two. One of them was an eighth of an inch under keeper size; the other a half inch under. I also hooked something really big that I could not stop from running. It finally did stop, though, but when it started pulling again, broke off. Probably a cow-nosed ray. 

There were some others fishing who caught nothing. Bait is important. Fluke love killies. And you have to rig that bait so a bank sinker of manageable weight sits below a short leader leading to, say, a size 2 hook. Beyond that it's wherewithal. Knowing how to catch them isn't an equation in the head. It's a matter of being. We say it's experience, but more than experience, it's a matter of encountering the water in the present, which certainly entails past experience, but is itself freedom.

I know plenty of fluke get caught on Gulp! synthetics, but Sunday there was so much eelgrass in the water, I don't believe trying to jiggle that stuff would have worked. Even the killies got into a mess much of the time, but I was able to keep them swimming freely for the most part.