No Keepers but a Great Day

This outing's been in the works for many months. When I told Fred I'm really keen on a keeper tog, he listened. And he figured April 18th was the best bet. 

We got to the lighthouse by about 10:30. The wind must have been a steady 30 knots from the southwest. The bay, streaked with white caps, loosened up the hold of brown snot-algae from the rocks, the bottom, whatever else. It got all over our lines, sinkers, swivels, bait. We'd haul up eight pounds of the stuff, and we didn't cast back out for long, though we did walk well out and away from the lighthouse, hoping to find a way to fish in close to the rocks where maybe the stuff got pulled out farther. 

Never happened. 

We tried another spot where inlet becomes more like bay. We got less algae on our lines, but still too much. In any event, no bites.

Besides the green crabs we used hoping to catch tog, Fred had some salted clams. We drove to a spot Fred knows about near the Causeway. Here algae wasn't loose in the water, and we set clams along a channel and on a flat, using three-ounce pyramid sinkers, hoping for stripers. 

Lots of conversation for an hour-and-a-half or so, but no hits. 

I got the bright idea of going back to the inlet. Maybe the incoming tide would be free of algae. 

When we got there, Fred recognized the vehicle of a Friend of his. We found him waiting out the tide with the same idea I had. Fred and I decided to go ahead and fish, even though the tide either continued to drop or the water near the surface moved seaward because of that wind. 

Maybe 40 knots by then. 

And then, after maybe a half hour, maybe less--I can't tell how long, lost my sense of time--the wind all but quit. The water stopped flowing, too. I got a bite. 

I had put my green crab in close on the rocks. I felt it get bit again. Said nothing. Again. And then the strike came and I set the hook. The blackfish I'm photographed with above. 

For maybe a half hour, we got lots of bites, but most of them felt the way I'd expect in water of about 52 degrees. Little taps, non-committal. But the other day, Fred caught blackfish left and right.

Today, I ended up catching another tog, Bigger. About 13 inches, but no keeper. Fred caught two, also under keeper size. 

It seemed that as soon as the fish began feeding in the calm, the wind began to come at us again but from the northeast. And the water flowed as tide began to rise. And the algae got all over our lines once more. And the fish stopped biting. 

Mixed Jetty Catches