By Marco Pompano, Surf Fishing Guide
The winds haven’t stopped blowing for a month. The air has been cold. The ocean is cooling down and the slabs, scouts, hogs, whatever you wanna call these big pompanos, they are here. Ya, mon!
I’m hiding behind the sea walls, running out to cast my lines, then running back behind the wall. The winds are out of the northwest. The current is holding, and the fish are biting.
We don’t have too many people out here when the weather is happening like this, just some diehard fishermen. The water temperature is 68°, perfect for the pompano to hang out for a while. The pompano are sort of like my Quebecois and Canadian friends who migrate: they come down here when the water is warm, when it’s cold up north, and go back up north when the water warms up. I don’t say that to insult anybody, it’s just the way it is.
I’m using mostly sand fleas and crab knuckles for my bait, and I just caught my first fish, a pompano, on fish gum, which a friend of mine told me to try. It’s called pomp-a-licious! So, I guess whatever I was throwing at them, they were eating.
The beach is clean and beautiful, all cleaned up from the months of Sargasso seaweed that kept messing with us. I’ve been wearing four layers with a windbreaker. The temperature’s been in the 50s and 60s, but with the windchill it’s colder all day long. That hot shower at night is looking good.
I set up at about 6:30 AM and by 6:40 AM one of my four poles goes off, no doubt what’s on that line. I pull in a beautiful slab pompano. I look over and my first line is tweaked over. Holy pompano! I do my quick walk over to that pole and pull in a 20-inch pompano to the V, probably 3 1/2 pounds. Ya, mon!
Things got even better. A good friend of mine, Monty Rome from Gloucester, Massachusetts, sent me a care package with some haddock fillets, monk fish clam pies, and some quahog clams, giant ones, which I decided to use for bait. All you people think I should make it into chowder, sorry.
I got up on the cold morning, 45°, wind from the northwest. Super fishable. I put out the clams on two rods and sand fleas on the other two. Within five minutes, one of my clam rods was singing, bouncing over with a big old pompano. We bait it up again with clam and immediately got another pompano. I was so happy that the clam was working. I actually had to calm myself down. Ya, mon!
In a few weeks the pompano will head south to the warmer waters, but for now it’s a pristine day, totally blue skies. The water has cleaned up tremendously: blue-green, dark. If you have the blues, or you’re even thinking you’re getting them, come on down to the beach and at least take a walk: It will cheer you up.
The best part about catching those pompanos on the clams was I had a charter on the beach, surf fishing with two people from northern Florida. So, I’m gonna filet these fish for them. They reeled them in and were ecstatic doing it.
Right now we’re listening to cover versions of old songs made into reggae music to get the vibes right, so me and the rest of these fish are heading to the smoker.
