By DJ Muller
With a fall run that had built up so much hype and promise my heighten sense of hope and expectation drove me into the wash daily. The river where I kept the boat showed me signs of hope and glory to come.
I haven’t seen so much bait in the river as I had seen this fall, I had even saw small bass swirling and frolicking in the afternoon sun, making life uneasy for the shoals of peanut bunker packed in. Usually they wait until the dark and quiet to take over. “This is going to be a good fall run this year,” I said to Steve, my fishing counterpart for better than ten years. “Should be one for the ages.”
The alarm clock jolted me from my slumber, my mouth dry and the air cold. I quickly and quietly got dressed. It was late November and the promise of a great fall run had fallen to ruin. Timely storms broke any kind of momentum that may have begun. The fish have been hard to come by. But still the river loaded with bait, the experts predictions, the thought of long cold winters dreaming of stripers rolling under clusters of diving birds, drove me once again. This could be the day; this could be the morning.
With a fresh cup of hot java in my grip I drove as fast as I was legally allowed down the deserted streets to my little piece of heaven on the beach. The air reeked with anticipation. I knew it had to happen soon, I just knew that today was going to be the day. I was due. There had been some good reports from the beaches just north of us; the wind blew light out of the northeast. I was due.
I shucked my first fresh clam and divided it up onto my two hooks. Out it went into the black. The waves lifted perfectly as I saw the white splash against a black tapestry. “Perfect”, I thought to myself, “Perfect”.
The sun rose. I watched vigilantly for my rod to bend over hard. It hardly moved. “Move! Take a bow you bastard, touch the ground!” My anxiousness and frustration mounted as the sunlight chased my expectation into the night. Suddenly the rod did a dance for me and I grabbed it. This isn’t what I’ve waited for. But a short on the beach is far better than a skunk for a day. I slid the 24” bass onto the sand. I stopped and stared down at it for a minute. I shook my head and unhooked the baby linesider. “Go tell mama I want to see her, I have a delicious treat for her”. I watched as the fish finned its way east through the skinny water. “Where there is smoke, there is fire I thought to myself. Another ball of fresh clam hit the water. “Perfect,” I said to myself, this time with a little less excitement. Fifteen minutes passed and once again the rod danced. “Mama?” I thought to myself. I grabbed the rod and took her back. “No mama,” but bass all the same… I guess. A twenty-six. At this point my mind changed venues as the sun rose quickly on it’s way to its summit. Scrambled eggs, bacon, hot coffee, or maybe Eggs Benedict today. It was time to go. “Typical of the whole fall run. You get up…and then you get down.” I said to myself pessimistically. The more I pondered it the better the breakfast idea looked. Two shorts… “I’m done”. Little comments and clichés fell from my lips as I cleaned my area and prepared to exit.
I stopped for a second. I thought. I looked around.
I thought about the long winter and how the spring run would seem to be about 3 years away come February. I thought how every winter I always kicked myself for not fishing harder. I thought about where I needed to be that morning. I had nowhere to go (except breakfast).
“Ah, what the heck, ten more minutes…for winter,” I made another cast. Threw it a little further this time. For winter, I didn’t pay my rod the attention that I had earlier, for my spirit was faltering. “Hey, your rod!” Someone cried. I pulled my head out of my bucket and saw my rod bent dead east. I grabbed it after a short, clumsy sprint in my waders. I leaned back hard and the drag hissed. The day took a new perspective at that point. I smiled. The fish broke water at about 50 yards, and then stubbornly conceded but not without reservation. Eighteen point four pounds my digital scale measured. “Yes! That‘s more like it,” I said under my breath. Finally, I had something to warm me when The Bass Pro Shop catalog gets ragged; when most bass are 250 miles south of here.
Ten more minutes... Three other times that season, I lingered, at the waters edge and twice it paid good returns.
Yeah, you may be on a lonely stretch one quiet morning, and you may think you smell that bacon cooking, although there is none. I encourage you to give it another ten minutes for you don’t know what old girl just swam around the jetty tip, looking for breakfast.
