In the meantime, Brenden Kuprel texted me minutes after the call. He was on his way to Sandy Hook. When Oliver and I got there, he had been fishing the Lot A area for going on two hours, having lost one bass and seen some caught. Oliver and I proceeded to Lot B, because Oliver knew it has a bathroom.
We got to surf's edge to find one of the guys among two or three others had just caught a small bass that must have barely broken the 28-inch size limit. An hour or two later, we saw another caught of about the same size, maybe a little better, and had got word of one getting caught before we had arrived.
We fished for some four hours. Obviously there were some bass in the surf, all of them having hit in the wash. A strong northeast breeze blew cold, 40-degree air onshore. Low tide I believe was 5:53, which means we did get an hour of fishing rising tide, but for the most part, water was shallow and the waves persistent. Even casting a heavy Krocodile spoon, I couldn't get it over the outer breakers until about halfway through the session, when I cast and cast to fish five or six yards behind those big breakers. I hoped I'd intercept a pod going by and one of the bass would take my offering.
I also fished a Deadly Dick. I tried a Binsky bladebait on my lighter rod. And I cast an Ava 17 rigged with a teaser.
Oliver gave up throwing lures and tried clam.
I used to surf fish all the time during the fall with my son. We brought foldout chairs and sort of broke camp by water's edge, holding our rods in surf-spike tubes, watching them intently, usually grabbing hold before one of them got pulled over and dragged towards the wash.
We did catch a lot of bass. So no interest in the clam Oliver put out dismayed me a little.
Brenden Kuprel showed up, having walked all the way from Area A. He told me he witnessed six caught, all on the Ava. He was here a week ago. With kids off for the teacher's convention, the lot was full, he told me, fishermen lined up on the beach, catching nothing at all. So at least there were some fish in the surf today. Or had been. By the time I really got involved in casts and retrieves, having had to deal with my black Lab Loki before that, it felt like nothing was there at all.
After I spoke about those years with my son, Oliver said, "Yeah. And if you didn't catch stripers, at least you caught skates." The surf felt all the more dead for none of them being around. The water is still plenty warm.
On the way over the bridge, Oliver said, "Have you ever been up to Twin Lights?" I saw the lighthouses up on the ridge in front of us.
"Never have."
"I'm surprised. You're into this kind of thing."
"I just never thought of it, so preoccupied with all else. Do you want to go up there?"
Today I climbed to the top of one of the Twin Lights, snapping the two photos below.
