THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 18, 1994 TAG: 9412150182
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 18 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Tight Lines
SOURCE: Ford Reid
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
It was a fool's errand, this trying to cast into a 20-knot wind from the northeast.
The surf was frothing at my feet, pushed so far up the beach that any notion of getting a lure or bait into productive water was nothing more than a fantasy.
There might have been fish 500 feet out - might have been - but they may as well have been 500 miles out.
They might as well have been heading for the coast of Spain on the other side of the Atlantic.
Still, I kept trying. I would have looked foolish, if there had been anyone foolish enough to be out there watching me.
There is something about the extremes of the surf fishing season, about the beginning in the cold, cold spring and about the end in the equally, but differently, harsh winter, that brings out a stubborn and crazy streak in me.
It makes me want something that I know I can't always have, want it so much that I keep trying to get it long after any real hope of success has long since faded into oblivion.
I have often watched fish that do a lot of sight feeding, bluefish and bonefish, mostly, and noticed that they seem most active in the first light and in the last light of day.
My theory is that in the morning they are greedy for that first opportunity. They feed with a voraciousness that the day has not yet tempered.
In the evening, they realize that their last feeding opportunities are disappearing with the light and they go after their prey with a reckless abandon.
I identify with those fish.
Like them, the first and last chances make me work a little harder, stay a little longer, act a little less rationally.
There may be other good fishing days before real winter sets in on the Outer Banks. The seawater is still relatively warm, thanks to a mild autumn, and there are, no doubt, fish near by.
But I can't count on that.
Something tells me that every trip to the beach with a surf rod and waders might be my last for a couple of months and I'm not ready for it to end for the year.
Not yet.
Anyone who has ever seen bluefish blitzing in the fall or early winter knows what I am talking about.
Squirrels might gather nuts and ants might store up crumbs to get them through the winter.
But with bluefish, you get the idea that they are doing more than accumulating fat before they go out to lay in the Gulf Stream's warm waters until spring.
They look as if they are having fun. They look as if they are going to miss the thrill of the chase as much as they are going to miss the food itself.
Me, too. by CNB