I’ll circle back in a day or two and tell the unembellished tale, but Brian’s photos were ready so I thought you Louts should see what you missed.
That disturbing “rip” in the ocean is one small pod of bluefish decimating a shoal of rainfish. This attack happened simultaneously along a mile-long section of beach for better than three hours Friday. At the peak, there were maybe ten rods working the blitz and Louts accounted for most of them.
Virtually every cast resulted in a bend like this one seen in my ten-weight XP. We found ourselves covering a lot of sand as a constant battery of killers moved into the shallows and then offshore again. I broke off more than I landed as fish fought each other for flies and literally severed our leaders in their confusion. Several spinner fishermen among us were crying foul as the fish quickly depleted their tackle boxes, but everybody was grinning. Eventually, I learned to fish the edges of the blitz and steer hooked fish away from the tumult. Since the whole thing was becoming a track meet, it seemed only appropriate to fire up a cigar.
We only brought one cooler, but could have easily filled a dozen or more with fish like this one. At one point, Brian counted nine bent rods in a hundred-foot section of beach. A spectator asked “Does this happen very often here?” and I couldn’t think of anything worthier than a Loutish reply: “You shoulda been here yesterday!” (He should have asked what kind of fool goes barefooting among all those teeth?)