Cuttyhunk Chronicles 2012 part 3

You are probably looking at pictures from the post on Sunday and  saying, “man, those guys crushed the fish at Cuttyhunk”. After all, everyone that went to Cuttyhunk since early May had a time of their life…or at least most people did. The surf fishing at Cuttyhunk has been off the charts in consistency this spring so if you are thinking of going next June, I suggest you book like,…. today ? I am not kidding.

Like I said, the fishing was very good all the way till this new moon..then it become a tough pick, almost a torture. It was a regular SJ crew consisting of Great White Hunter, Yo Dude, Fearless Ray and yours truly. Unfortunately the Silver Fox bowed out at last minute. Fortunately they all caught few fish this weekend.

I think Great White Hunter did few small fish on Super Strike Darters in the cove that first night, Yo Dude did a 20 pounder at the point on a Super Strike needlefish and I think Fearless Ray had a small fish…that was night 1

You’ve read yesterday about my first night on the island in the oppressive heat of an early summer heat wave. You’ve read about a watch that stopped at 9 21 . We woke up sweating profusely in Bonnies house Friday morning. No fan or ac, and no breeze . By noon we were baking indoors. After polishing some sausage and peppers we went right back to one thing we could do…nap..it was either that of watching Great White Hunter prance around like a school girl and sing Imma Be by Black Eyed Peas.

The 3 AM lasagna from a night before and noon’s sausage and peppers did not play well with 6 dozen chocolate truffles my wife made for us….or I should say that the chocolate precluded some badly needed bodily functions. But we pushed forward with Great White Hunter’s venison stew for dinner. By the time I suited up at 8 pm, I looked like a Pillsbury doughboy.

As you know, we had some nasty thunderstorms in NY/NJ/CT area Friday. The guys decided that they were not going out till the treat of thunderstorm passes. Being the only idiot in the group, I looked at the radar on my phone, on which it looked like the thunderstorm might miss up and suited up and left them playing cards. I jumed into the water under the club to cool of and made few casts but there was no life there. The walk to southwest point was the longest walk of my life ! Not only were the bugs eating me alive but I was sweating profusely in the heavy, humid air. Once I got there , I dove into the water head first to cool off, then I came ashore and chilled out for a moment.

I had a perfect tide and a current that was moving just right. The rock i swam to was very good to me on this tide over the years. And I tried every plug in my bag twice and some rigged eels and had big fat zero to show for my efforts. After getting freaked out by the watch thing last night and a big ol’ skunk, tonight I was not going to be denied a fish…or so I thought.

The lightning stayed away in the distance and I wondered if my guys got out. There was nothing I could do about it, no phone, no watch, no contact of any kind. I was sure they were fishing, probably under the club.

An hour or so later Manny Moreno and his fishing partner Peg arrived and he promptly jumped in the water too. He said he felt like water around him sizzled like he was a piece of bacon landing on a hot frying pan! They both got on a rock that is really a one man rock while I was on the rock that held two easily. At first I offered one of them to join me but then I thought I would be a gentleman and offer my rock to him and his partner. I jumped in the water, said goodbye and swam away. I was done with this spot anyway.

I took another long walk back to a cove on the south side and descended down the cliff. I knew Bob Jones aka “Jonesbeachbob” was in there. I seen him cast as i walked to the point few hours earlier. The funny thing was, he did not know who I was as I had my light off but he has seen me descend down the cliff a hundred yards away. He yelled at a perfect stranger “What time it is? I don’t have my watch”

Funny how everyone needs to know what time it is ? And yet , I was made to feel like a weirdo for insisting on wearing one. Go figure 🙂

I thought this was very funny considering I myself just asked Manny for the time ! I told him Manny told me it was 11 pm before I left so it must be like 11 15   by now. I started in one corner of the cove looking for rocks to stand on and I was having a hard time finding anything good. Water was high and all the rocks were covered with at least two feet of water. To make matters worst, we had flat conditions, calm like a lake, which made very difficult to pick out where the rocks are. With  a little wave action, you can often easily spot the place where boulder is under the surface as water rushes over. Not on a calm night. But it makes a great night for fishing eels I said to myself….

I found a half-assed good rock but I was in the water waist high. On any other night, I would have gotten swept from this rock by a first wave. But tonight, the waves were nonexistent. I threw everything in my bag again and again, with same results. Bob Jones bid adieu in about an hour and he said he was getting off the island in the morning and I was left alone in a cove. I waded back to the shore and walked to the other side of this large cove. There was a rock in the corner I wanted to get on. The problem was it was close to high water and the rock was two feet under the surface,approximately a hundred yards off the beach. I began bobbing towards where I though the rock was. As hard as I tried to strain my eyes in the darkness, the rock was nowhere to be found. Kind of funny considering its the size of an SUV . I bobbed in the water, with my rod under water prodding in all direction, hoping to hit something hard. After about a half hour of fruitless search I gave up and  swam towards an even big rock approximately fifty yards to the left of where my mystery rock should be. Both of these rocks will get you in the same waters, one is under water while the other is much larger, like a full size truck, and out of the water . Why I wasted my time and was looking for a submerged one when I could have gone on this one, even bigger and flatter rock? Because this rock is so large that is almost impossible to get on it other than on the top of the tide. At any other stage of the tide the rock is so far out of the water, its impossible to climb on it.

As luck would have it ,it was high tide. I placed my rod on the top of it and tried to get on. I remember last year when I tried to do this under much different conditions and the wave swept my rod off the rock. I found it in about ten feet of water by diving around the rock but I panicked plenty. This night, the top of the rock never got wet at all. Eventually I got my fat sausage, venison, lasagna stuffed ass onto the rock and started casting.

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