A Day on the Bay

ok, I probably need to get more creative with titles, but yesterday's activities really qualifies.

The weather finally cooperated for once, and I simply took a day off from work.

Good choice.

Went out on the waverunner with some friends to go clamming. Yes, wrote about that earlier, but yesterday had the "full contingent" out there: 3 waverunners and 4 clammers. Sort of. I don't qualify as a clammer, but I'm starting.

We left from our usual Absecon ramp, with a little more wind than expected. Duh, the story of the year. NOAA says 5-10 and lessening winds, and instead it was 10-15 with gusts.  Ok, it did calm down by the end of the morning...

One fellow, Jeff, clammed these backbays about 40 years ago when he was a teenager. It's always fascinating to speak with "a local"... he spoke about different bays, and using the foot technique: walking barefoot and feeling for the clams in deep, soft, mud. Not something I'd feel comfortable doing, even as a teenager, but hey, he was a clammie :)

We got out to the usual bar, setup and spent a good hour walking around, digging, and loading the clams back up to the waverunners.

A bit tired (yeah, we're old farts by now), tooled around the bay and then zipped over to Gardner's Basin, to a fantastic waterfront place called Gilchrist. Nice breakfast/lunch place.

Finished up and headed back out, and saw the lineup at the inlet portion of Brigantine. Now this was a nice day in June, but it was a Tuesday. Doesn't anybody work anymore?

So, after getting back to the ramp, I checked in on my brother in law, and the afternoon fishing was "on"... he got some word that there were fish hitting.

"They slew them yesterday over at the guzzles"  "ut oh" I thought. Anyone slaying anything the day before usually spells trouble for today, but we really had no choice. Prior scouting hadn't yielded any better news.

So, I got down to the dock where the boat was, we loaded up and took the ride South... about a half hour trip or so.

Getting there, we ran into some serious wind against tide. While I know better, and was thinking about using a float rig (for another post), I didn't. And we didn't catch for quite a while.

So, we started moving back, finding a little shelter, and eventually found some fish.

Dolphin Play

After getting a few keepers, and it getting a bit late in the day, we made our way back North, cutting across the Great Egg Harbor Inlet.

There, we got to witness some of nature's beauty and power, as about 30-40 eastern bottlenose dolphin   were corralling and pounding baitfish. We powered down and just watched the show for a while. I didn't have a great camera, but a few shots at least give a glimpse of the beauty. The pictures don't really give the full impact of what we witnessed, but it's what I have.

Back at the dock, gnats hitting ferociously, we filleted the flounder and divided up fish and clams...

A beautiful day on the Bay!