And Jayne is right, we saw a lot of cool things. I spent a bunch of time on the water, either learning how to surf (I was just getting confident when the waves, already anemic, gave out completely) or fishing so I saw a bunch of cools things.
Eddie and I went to a fishing pier on Thursday and as we were dunking our bloodworms and reeling in Spot that weighed less than and weights, someone pointed out a ray floating by. At first I didn't see it - couldn't have imagined that the enormous shadow floating in less than 3 feet of water was really alive. It was a ray (a Manta Ray, maybe), probably 8 feet from wing to wing and with a tail that was about 10 feet long. There was also a smaller ray 3-4 feet wide that was flying around gorging itself on schools of minnows. Unfortunately, very few bluefish schools came through while we were there. But Eddie did give his Spot to a Cobia / King angler at the end of the pier for bait and he caught two Cobia.
The bluefish, as Jayne showed, did run through the beach where we were, close enough to get to, on the last day we were there. They were crushing the minnows (see Jayne's pictures of the explosions on the water's surface) and herding them onto the beach (see Jayne's pictures of those who leapt to their death in the sand, only to have our children delight in their innumerable corpses.) I had put my rod away already but went and got it again. After waiting all week for that, I didn't mind looking a little silly running down the beach to catch up with the schools. They were small (8-12 inches) but they are nothing but muscle and teeth and they are a lot of fun (until one took his revenge and clamped down on my pinky...)Earlier in the week I was surfing when the blues ran through, maybe 100 yards off the beach. The blues were rounding them up from below and the birds were picking them off from above. There was also a bunch of bait around me but no blues. Then, all of a sudden, a dorsal fin sliced through the water about 20 feet out from me, cutting a line through the school of bait for about 10 feet. The speed of it was what was so impressive. 10 feet in less than a second - just flying. It was pretty clearly a shark but I have no idea how big. The dorsal fin was only about 3-4 inches high - at least that's what broke the surface. I sincerely doubt it was more than 2.5 feet. Still, I hopped off of my board and ran back to the shore. I didn't want it to mistake my finger for a finger mullet.
We also say a number of rays jumping in the surf. Yes, jumping. They would flop out of the water, up to a foot, and crash back in the water. We caught two skates (small rays) - one on a rod and one, believe it or not, in a cast net.
The funniest sight of the week was also related to fishing. Eddie had taken out one of my rods with the other boys - Conwey was supervising. Eddie left the rod in a sand-spike, baited with cut mullet. All of a sudden, something hits it and pulls the sand-spike down and, in an instant, the rod is in the water. Conwey gets up to grab it but it is steadily swimming out to Bermuda. Conwey won't give up and is literally swimming after the rod as it plows through the waves. The whole scene was something out of Popeye - until Conwey caught up to the rod, well past the breakers, and, instead of seeing it was attached to a cartoon whale, the line broke. Yes, all that for nothing... Thanks Conwey!
The first night we were there the boys made a game of catching as many ghost crabs as they could with their flashlights, using their t-shirts as nets. Those boys have some serious hunter-genes. They were incredibly aggresive. They filled a few pizza boxes with ghost crabs and after donating one to a guy fishing for sharks took them back to the house. I stepped away for just a second and then entire contents of one box ended up in the pool. I fished them out with the net - and I think I got all of them...
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