Serendipity + Surf

I was reading Tide (http://www.joincca.org/TIDE.html) the other day, reading about Pompano eating shrimp and crabs, and thought that the forecast for Saturday could offer flat green water and that maybe I ought to stop for a pint of live shrimp instead of netting up mullet at the beach.

So I stopped just over the causeway to buy bait and drove down Harborside (no train delay today, and the city fixed another traffic light) to the beach and stepped in just after sunrise.

The first gut was full of little croaker, small enough that some of ‘em I just slung as bait till they worked their way off the hook. The second gut held ladyfish, toothy little torpedoes no good on the table but acrobatic when hooked. Both species were eager to eat my just bought shrimp.

But around eight 0’clock I lost a bait to some more muscular fish, something that pulls hard, runs fast, and might cough-up your lure when you get ‘em in close. Soon I had one, an eighteen inch Pompano. I whooped. Big whoop. Could I get another?

I landed three more by ten thirty, included one that launched itself vertically out of my cull net to escape. This was a ice cream day in the summer surf, green to the beach, water so clear I could see my feet in chest-deep water. Could last until cold weather, or the next hurricane; think I’ll go back the next chance I get.