Intro to Sandy Hook

So the morning started out early, about 2:00 AM. The truck trip read:

Pay no attention to the check engine light, but a mild 37 degrees was a good start.

This would be my first trip to Sandy Hook. The drive is fairly simple, especially that early in the AM. Took roughly 2 hours, plus roughly 45 mins. extra for getting lost in the Sandy Hook park, looking for my certain parking lot. Turns out, I was still in the wrong area. Never the less, I rigged up and hit the beach. I ended up walking a good distance to meet up with the PA Fly Fish crew. Although, I was greeted by a wonderful sunrise.

Since I was a bit late arriving, I missed a nice morning blitz. I figured, it would just be another case of, "should have been here yesterday (earlier)". I began fishing right away. Found a nice spot near the point, which I liked. Had a nice school of bait right in front of me, with shad & blues working it. It was a mix of sand eels and rain bait. I was fishing a single sand eel pattern. Later I was schooled about a tandem rig & boy did it work to perfection. Learning that using knowledge in other areas of fishing and applying them to fly fishing is a good idea. 

The day was filled with CATCHING! Imagine that...fishing and catching fish. Everything from shad, blues and stripers. The bait moved around most of the day, but was close enough for fly casting. So we had a decent group & a perfect collection of fish being caught, photo'd and released. Overall it was a great first time trip to Sandy Hook. I should have spent more time exploring around the area, but I accomplished what I needed.

My fly selection was a straight forward clouser (yellow) on the front end of a tandem rig. Trailing fly was a half-n-half (clown). Worked very effectively.

Tandem rig leads to tandem hook ups!

Was a good day...

And I didn't realize how much I miss those single day road trips. We live in a good area for that. The immediate area has crappie fishing, but realistically, you can travel to some awesome fishing. Figure a days trip covers all NJ coast, northern area of Chesapeake, Susquehanna, central PA trout, etc...A long weekend can really set you up nicely.