An all Nighter

I know I start many blog posts with " I had these two days off this week so I did, blah,blah blah" but it makes sense since most of my adventures are on my days off. I'm finding it harder and harder to justify long drives after work because I can only fish for a few hours. On days off I can fish all day or stay up late as I want. I have not figured out the risk vs. reward divided by four dollar gas equation yet, but I think you get the idea.

So having today and Saturday off I chose to fish last night. I had this crazy plan all week to fish Narragansett until I could barely stand, go find a spot to sleep in the car then wake up and fish during the day today. The only question was whether or not I would "lazy out"

My friend Laurie comes over every Thursday and we watch the NBC sitcoms until 10. So I left on my adventure at 10 pm. She offered to stay home, but only a bad friend would have blown her off to go fishing ( unless its a new moon then it is understandable).

 So I got to the ocean about 11:30. The waves were not too bad and happily there was a lot of cloud cover. I got my waders on and walked out to my chosen spot. Within minutes I hooked and landed a 33 inch striper. No matter what, I felt good about that. At least my adventure and half tank of gas would not be for naught. I fished for about three hours at this spot. I caught five keeper bass up to 36 inches. They were all caught on four inch shad bodies and 5 inch wildeyes.  I tried swimmers but with my eight foot rod and my vertical challenge I just did not feel I was getting the distance I needed to fish the plug effectively. So I concentrated on shorter casts towards structure. The strategy paid off.

At about two thirty I headed to the East Wall to sleep in my car in the fishermens parking lot. I laid my head down at 3 am. I slept on and off until 6:30. Some tool decided to pull in and park right next to my car. Mind you I was sleeping not facing the water in the back corner of the lot. I guess its good I got woken up but another hour of sleep would have been nice.

  When I woke, the waves were significantly larger.  I started fishing different spots, most of them were dirty. Even when I found clean water, I did not find any bait. I managed one snapper blue. I decided to fish a back estuary ( read; out of the big surf and wind) This paid off for me also, I found a school of hickory shad and caught them until my heart was content. They were a lot of fun. They are acrobatic leapers that put up a hell of a fight on a light rod. They are very aggressive and will devour a small jig that resembles a small baitfish. I was using a 1/4 ounce jig and 2 inch shads and 3 inch zoom flukes. Both were equally effective. As I am sure small grubs, wildeyes or bucktail jigs would work well. One guy was using a fly rod but could not reach the school that well and picked up a couple.

After catching my fill I drove home The waves were still building and I decided not to spend the rest of my day looking for clean water. . I tried to stay up but my bed was calling my name.