Two weeks ago I filled you in on one of the first attempts I made to actually get out and fish the surf for stripers this year. If you recall, things didn’t go as planned. What follows is the second such attempt; enjoy.
It took me a few days to get over the setback of not having a functioning light and order replacements online, but once they arrived I had a surge of energy and motivation to fish. My gear was still packed and at the ready on my porch, but now I was square in the middle of some excellent trout fishing with my son. Most days we would hit the local stocked waters, either before or after work, and this served to quench my need to fish just enough until a friend called to say he had done really well on striped bass the night before at a local tidal river. I have very little interest to target holdovers on the big rivers, but with decent winds and so-so tides that evening, I figured it was time to try the surf again. I adjusted my surf bag contents for no good reason other than to tinker with plugs, and the work caught my son’s eye, “Dad, are we going fishing tonight? I want to catch a striper!” The spots I planned to fish were not kid-friendly, so I made a deal with him to go for trout instead, but when the weather got a little nicer I would make it up to him.
After an early dinner I went out to my truck to adjust the trout rods for our destined spot, but when I opened the trunk door I noticed the dome light didn’t turn on. I shut the door, moved to the driver’s seat and turned the key—nothing. I swore a few times, punched the dash and tried again with the same results. Inside I went to grab the wife’s car keys to jump my truck. Fifteen minutes later I accepted that my battery was deader than dead, but in COVID-19 America I had to drive the wife’s car 20 minutes each way to get to a store with the required battery in stock.
Back home I swapped the battery out as fast as possible, checked my watch and figured I had about an hour of fishing time with my son before the sun set and he’d need to be in bed, so we rushed to the nearest trout stream and had at it. My mind wasn’t in it, but my son’s was and he landed several rainbows and a solid brown before it got too dark to unhook a fish without the use of a flashlight (I left them back home on top of my surf bag.). I went fishless but had a good time nonetheless unhooking the fish my son caught. All the way home he rambled on about trout fishing and what I did wrong and what I could do to make sure I would catch something the next time we fished.
Once back at home I could feel the motivation to gear up for the surf was all but gone. Having run around with the battery issue, and then hitting the trout stream for some good father-son time, there was simply no way a few hours casting for maybe schoolies was going to make the day any better, so I accepted the idea that my surf season would be put off another few days.
It actually took another two full weeks before I’d finally hit the surf as I came up with every manner of excuse not to go in the interim. When I finally did make that first cast (the night before I sat down to write this), I hooked up almost immediately and proceeded to drop the fish just as quickly. I fished the 9-inch Slug-Go all the way to my feet without a follow-up strike, and fear of a first-cast-jinx night began to fill my head. Cast number two landed at roughly the same spot as the first, and it produced almost duplicate results—now I knew I was in trouble and perhaps my whole season was to be a loss. Cast three had very little “oomph” to it and was more of a lob. I lazily began the retrieve but it only took a few cranks on the reel to feel another solid take. This time I set the hook, hard, and made sure the fish stayed tight. A few seconds later I had a fish of about 20 inches finning in the wash—success!
I stayed at that spot for about two hours, landing four additional fish and dropping a bunch more. As I walked back down the sand towards my truck I couldn’t help feel good about the unconventional path I had taken to start my 2020 surf striped bass season.
