I am not a videographer. I did this on the fly with the family in the car in a relatively intense situation…Please forgive the Cloverfield-esqueness of the following clip:

So that was the view at 3:00 PM on Saturday in the deep back of Raritan Bay. As you know, it got a lot worse. Just to put it in perspective, that wall is no less than 10′ high. By high tide, it was completely washed over.

The news outlets have covered the storm ad nasuem so I am not going to get into it anymore other than to say that it certainly set back fishing–but not as much as you may have thought.

First off, the water temps are soaring. 47 degrees as of 8:00 PM this evening and with relatively light winds and bright sunshine you can expect to see that magic 50 degree mark by tomorrow.

The storm completely and utterly rewrote every beach, every bar, every hole, and a fair amount of structure in and around Raritan Bay and beyond. Princes Bay to the Conference House is an absolutely foreign land when it comes to surf fishing spots now. Holes are, undoubtedly, filled in and new ones created. The storm lifted everything off of the beaches and deposited in the bay, so there is a ton of new structure to be found and mapped. There are definitely new sandbars built up all over the place.

The stripers will be on the feed once the water clears a bit. We should see less-than-brown conditions by late tomorrow with a good set of tides.

Obviously, there were few people fishing and so reports are nil. I am sure someone was out today, but they’re not saying anything. As for me, I am waiting until the weekend to get out and sling some clams from the sand.

I wouldn’t even bother with worms although it is nice to have a choice. With the maelstrom, clams are probably so abundant…stripers wont even be keying on anything else.

I’d also leave the wire leaders at home should you be expecting an early season bluefish. The runoff and rainwater has pushed the salinity in the bay way down and that will keep the gators out of here for sometime now.

I would go so far as to say that you won’t see a bluefish until the first or even second week of April. Then again, I’d love someone to prove me wrong.

I’d have more to say by the end of the weekend and hopefully some pictures of stripers being landed to boot

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