Heightened Senses

I spent twenty two long seasons freezing in the north east and my blood has definitely thinned out since residing in Southern California for the last 16+ years. I equate California weather to the Bill Murray movie "Groundhog Day". 1  The same day and weather keeps repeating over and over. California is beautiful but the sameness, uniformity and lack of seasonal changes wears on my psyche. In the Northeast the weather and environment is more harsh and it has a tendency to shape your personality and attitude towards life. In essence all the pretense has been beaten out of you and people say what they mean. 

Late Fall : : T h a n k s g i v i n g   W e e k

I haven't showered in two days because I am staying at my beach house in south Jersey and we only have an outside shower. The water is currently turned off so the pipes don't freeze over night. The high for today should reach 32 degrees so I go outside and crawl under the house and turn on the water to the shower. I let the hot water warm up for a minute then run outside in my towel and jump in. All is good until a gust of wind blows frigid air under the door. Thats my queue to move inside. Well I am definitely awake now no coffee needed. I layer on all the clothes that I packed, pull up my waiters, grab my rod and headed up the street to the ocean.

I follow my shadow down towards the waters edge and slip waist deep into the Atlantic. The pressure of the cold surf vacuum sucks my waiters around my legs as I make my first cast. A north west wind blows cold air into my lungs waking me from a long three month slumber. The cold is invigorating spiking all my senses into the red.

My dad and I pace back and forth from Jetty to Jetty hoping to cross paths with migratory cow striped bass. I seemed to have missed that window this season but still have fun with light tackle and finesse fishing for smaller resident stripers. The beach is desolate this time of year except for some 4x4 tracks and lonely seagull footprints along the waters edge. As the sun sets I catch my first fish but my hands are completely numb and I fumble the bass in the wash. Its dorsal fin pricks my hand as I release her back into the wild and my blood flows out with the tide. As night falls we call it and walk back towards our small cedar shake bungalow following plumes of smoke rising from distant fireplaces. The smell of firewood trigger nostalgic thoughts of fall in my brain. Its short lived though, as my phone vibrates in my chest pocket bringing me back to reality. 5:43pm…I'm late.

1. Groundhog Day    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE8nNUASSCo

Slack Tide

"There is a moment sailors call Slack Tide, when the tide is neither coming in nor going out, perfectly still. A moment frozen in time when the world seems to stop and briefly rest. Everything is quiet, peaceful, tranquil, undisturbed." With no water moving the fish stop biting and I put down my rod and soak in my surroundings. This brief window allows me to eat my lunch and visually capture the kelp forrest that I am now motionlessly floating in. The suns warm glow illuminates kelp stringers as baitfish weave through her maze. 

This pause in time is short lived and as the tide and wind pick up its serene veil is lifted. I pitch a swimbait in heavy cover anticipating the next strike that will jolt me out of my meditative state.

Quiet Waters

Thick forests of Black Pine creep ever so close to the oceans edge where nature is stunted by harsh salt encrusted winds eroding them over wind swept dunes like mini bonsai trees. My parents property is a stone throw away from a salt water canal that runs through this small east coast maritime town like its lifeblood. All you have to do is walk out the side door and and a few footsteps away lies several private properties and neighbors docks to fish from. 

This town doesn't receive the heavy pressure of surf crazed striper fishermen. You can really get lost in pitch black nights hunting for bass as they tail slap and boil up along the banks of this canals fast moving currents. The fish are not pressured here but there is so much bait fish in the water that the bass become ultra selective. Add on top that the window when they feed is time sensitive from 15 minutes before sunset to and hour after dark it makes this some of the most technically challenging fishing I have ever done. All night you can hear hundreds of bass slapping along the banks. You see a tail swirl and try casting blindly as close along the bank as you can without snagging a low lying bush. If you hook into a striped bass the fish actually has a huge advantage on you, the ripping current. They instinctively swim out deep into the middle of the canal and if your drag is too tight they pop you off and too loose you will get spooled. I must of lost five or six nice fish before I figured out the correct drag.  Here are a few compiled clips from my Summer 2014 trip.

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the apple doesn't fall far from the tree

When I look through old photo albums my dad is always posing with a fish next to me and my sister. He has been fishing his whole life and really got serious in the early 1960's. He started reading books on the natural life and habits of Striped Bass, experimented with numerous lures and meticulously dedicated time to a fishing journal. With pen and paper he has logged every fish he has every caught from 1960 to 2014. He logs the date, fish species, weather condition, wind, tide, length, and lure. Then he has all these field drawings that visually show sandbars cuts, structure and where and how he caught fish. I always learn new things when I sit down with my dad and we thumb through pages of fishing knowledge and insight he has collected over the years. He understands that before a storm the barometer will drop and fish instinctively know to feed because the water will be churned up for a few days. He can read the water conditions and know where the fish are going to ambush prey. He is selective and only fishes a few specific hours a day. His favorite is called the "Magic Hour", the last fleeting hours of sunlight into dark. 

Fast forward thirty plus years and like osmosis I have absorbed all the same habits and traits as my father only they are slightly more modern. I document everything fish I catch via photographs, computer information graphics and log it on my blog. You can say the "apple doesn't fall far from the tree" or we are "cut from the same log".

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Hunt | Gather | Cook
Delaware Tributaries: Slot limit 20" to 26" from July 1 to August 31st
Striped Bass Caught on August 7th, 2014 @ 11:15 PM
Tide: High 7pm  |  Low: 1am (outgoing tide)  Size: 24"   Lure: Custom Painted black Rattle Trap with blue/green glitter (three coats of clear lacer finish)

New Jersey | Island Beach State Park
August 8th @ 3pm caught Blue Claw Crabs and Middle Neck Clams
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Hunt | Gather | Cook {the meal}
Striped Bass sliders with spinach, tomato, sautéed shallots, and avocado with steamed crab seasoned with Old Bay and clams off the grill with lemon butter sauce

The Boat Dreams from a Hill

Wooden Boat Build | Bevin's Skiff

DESIGN SPECS

LOA (feet): 12'

Beam (feet): 4' 6"

Weight: 120 lbs.

Capacity (8" freeboard): 450 lbs.

Home Port: Lewes, Delaware

Build Time: One Month 16 days

Launch Date: August 30th, 2014

Wood: Marine okoume plywood for the sides and bottom, clear spruce for the chines and rails, and Atlantic white cedar for the transom. 

Photo Credits: Scott Wyss, Bob Wyss, Kristian Kozlowski, Thomas Mason

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"Working in an environment with good smelling materials and being able to see the physical results of your work at the 
end of the day have a positive impact on one's well-being"
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home grown | local caught

Aside from your cuisines appearance and flavor, is the elegance, honesty and beauty expressed in the process by which you obtained it.  Super Markets, product labels, and store shelves are actively marketing misleading terms like Organic, Certified Naturally Grown, Sustainable, Farm to Table, Free-range, Grass-fed, Hormone-free, Non-GMO, Fair trade. With all these buzzwords flying around us its hard to truly know what to believe.

If you want to side step all the super market trends and know exactly where your food is coming from then cultivating your own garden and fishing for local seafood is the right path. Every detail and step toward the final cooked meal is carefully planned, pursued and realized. From composting your own soil to making a perfect cast to a rising fish. To acquire good results you need to be dedicated, patient and to spend a lot of time and energy in you pursuit. You get out what you put in.
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TABLE FARE: Striped Bass over Fresh Garden Vegetables*
Grilled local caught Striped Bass sauteed over a bed of steamed swiss chard and kale with Yellow Summer Squash and a lemon zest. 
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Hunt | Gather | Cook*
 *Everything for this meal was grown in the backyard and caught out front on the canal