Fishing the wind

Some people think I am weird. Sometimes (ok, all the time) my wife does. And even I question my sanity sometimes. And sometimes I even have my doubts about talking about things that happened in the past in a public forum like this or at seminar in fear of being wrong.

Don’t you ever wonder that things that happen to you, do they only happen to you or is this actually a pattern that you can expand on it? The curse of being a seminar speaker is twofold. First, we all know I have a face for radio. And number two, tendency of people from different parts of the striper coast to fish different ways…and I don’t mean slightly different. I mean VERY different.

For example, east of CT many more people utilize eels and fish from boat and surf then south of CT. I also find that my friends in MA do not care for hard wind in their face, but frankly, neither do NJ guys. But when either of these groups get to Montauk, them and regulars cant get enough of the wind in your face.

Ok, where am I going with this?

Wind

No, not passing wind out of your buttocks. I am talking about influence of winds on where you fish. Many times when I speak at seminars I try to tell people “this is the way I fish”, not necessarily the way you should. I know a lot of guys that will fish nothing but wind in their back and gentle surf and they do great. That really is not my point.

The other day I arrived at spot in Jones Inlet where bluefish have been very active at dusk. I mean very active. Kind of stupid fishing where you are either tossing a bucktails or a tin. You must be crazy wanting to deal with trebles on every cast.

Anyway, on this day wind switched from being a wind with the tide to wind against the tide. One of my fellow club members remarked how water was “not moving as it should”, because the wind was holding it back. Consequently, the rip never properly set up either. My son and I plugged for about an half an hour, myself with bucktails , him with AOK tin. I really did not care the way water was moving. There were about thirty guys lined up and I’ve seen no fish caught until I nailed one.

I asked my son if he was up to finding a spot where wind did not screwed up current as much. This spot was less than mile away in the inlet. He said sure, so off we went

When we got there we found five guys all hooked up with bluefish to 15lb and I mean , they had them on every cast. The funny thing is this spot had no fish the evening before while the one we just came from was hot as pistol

Coincidence? I doubt it

Because for the past 4 days while we had hard east wind this spot lit up every day while the other that was hot for a week while southwest winds were prevalent was ok at best. You are talking spot A had few fish at dawn and dusk while spot B has enough fish to make you scream “I cant fight another monster blue in this current because my arms will fall off”. And they were very close to one another.

I would bet good money that today spot B will go to its regular fish-here-or-there routine where spot A might get hot.

Love it of hate it, wind has tremendous influence on our success. You don’t need to like the wind in your face or you back, but you do also should not fight it. Part of being a successful surfcaster is to understand the influence wind has on a particular location. That is why sharpies recommend of learning few spots really well instead of running around chasing yesterday reports in the unfamiliar spots.

Don’t take my word for it, ask a good surfcaster when you meet one