Fishing with Pappy page 5

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Beeluna Island A lovely place for all beach activities, the Island itself is a State Park, and therefore subject to State Park rules and regulations, such as being opened to the public from breakfast time to dinner time, only. Pappy doesn't like this, as it eliminates sunrise and night fishing, which are two of my favorite times to get a line in the water. Good ol' Cap'n Phill an' I decided to take a noontime trip to the island, easily accessible via the Sandsound causeway, to do some fishing recon and feed the fish there some dead shrimp. When it's just the two of us day fishin', we go lite; small cooler, half-supplies, no cart, ideal for some good amount of sand-walking. The twin storms wrecked the fishing pier there I believe, so we were set on some long casts into the flat surf. Water was calm, great day for small craft boating, and saw a few hardy kayakers, paddling away with their poles in the air like antanae. There's no way you'd get Pappy on one of those narrow things with all me gear just waitin' to go swimmin' when most certainly I capsize the tiny craft. Was beautiful for all things that day, especially fishin' on the beach. Sky was cloudy enough to provide a bit o' shade, but not so much as to let the air chill, and the wind was relaxed. Now if only the fish would cooperate. We spent the next several hours feeding the fish our ample supply of frozen shrimp, from Cap'n Phill's deep freeze he uses to store all the extras from the last outting. That's a place where the Cap'n an' Pappy disagree... I like to fish until the shrimp are all gone, but Cap'n Phill goes home whenever he feels like the fishin' is done, then freezes the leftovers. This day we didn't have a choice in the matter, as the Park itself closes, even though the water never does. Since we arrived around 1pm, all the best spots fishing from rock outcroppings were taken, so we settled for a spot close to the rocks, and cast out with 2 ounce bullet weights, carolina style, with a 30# fluro leader sportin' a few colorful beads Pappy rigged up. That's fishin' jargon, right there, so Pappy's gonna explain... ~Continued on right	~Continued from left Bullet weight is an egg shaped piece of lead with a hole in it running length-wise. The Carolina reference is the way you set up the combination of items you're using, called rigging, specifically allowing the bullet weight to freely slide up and down the line, stopping at the metal swivel between the pretty colored braid, and the leader. The leader is a separate piece of line attached to the spooled line on the reel, at the working end. the purpose of this is two fold; One, to increase the tensile strength at the end, where most breaks occur, and two, to decrease visibility of the line in the water leading up to the bait. Fluro refers to monofilament made of flurocarbon, a compound which is almost invisible in water, has more forgiving memory (doesn't hold it's coil like regular mono), but is significantly more expensive. It's easy to justify the extra cost when you factor in that you're only using it for leader material, a little at a time, not to spool on the reel itself. And beads are just that, beads, little colorful baubles with holes in them to run line through. I guess they're supposed to attract curious fish, but on this particular day, they proved ineffective. We got lots and lots of noise, little pecks and grabs at each cast, all fruitless. the bait stealing was on another level today. One tap at the line, then nothing. Slow retrieve, just in case, but almost every reel-in showed an empty hook immediately. I'd say there was a bit of disappointment, but even in the face of abject failure, all fishin' is beautiful to Pappy. Every cast an exercise of hope and possibility. It was a beautiful day, we met several kind passersby and made light conversation, sharing smiles with strangers. We drank bourbon from a shampoo bottle, talked about life and people and fishing, got some good sand-walking exercise, and lots of vitamin D. And we fed a lot of fish. Was a good day! Cap'n Phill fishing from the rocks ~end
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