Short weekend

For me, the major effect of the hurricane was the mess it made of my schedule. Since my police rookie school class that I teach was cancelled on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I was forced to teach Friday night for four hours, (missing a killer high tide to fish in the marsh) and to teach eight hours today, Sunday, to make that up. Then it's four hours tomorrow, four on Tuesday night and I finish up with four hours on Monday the 26th. Then I'm done till late January when a new class starts.
The post storm fishing is always surprising. Sometimes it screws up the fishing for over a week while the rivers drain all their gunk out the inlet. This time, for the few hours out on Saturday, things were wide open. Mullet were everywhere and large bluefish were chomping on them. Fall fishing here is fantastic-the downside is that the days are shorter and afterwork fishing presents and ever smaller window of opportunity and the real bummer is that before we know it, winter will be bearing down on us. Now through Thanksgiving is prime time-after that it's hit or miss-more often it's a miss because cold weather fishing sounds great in the abstract but it's hared to drag yourself out of bed to face a cold, gray sea and winds that are chilled by the 50 degree waters. Once you get cold on a boat, it is nigh impossible to get warmed back up-at least not on a skiff. It won't be long until these speedsters start showing up and the entire east coast will drag their boats down the interstates to Cape Lookout and Harker's Island to chase them-hoards of grown men drinking beer, waving graphite sticks and acting like fools. The local economy booms and the restaurants are filled with their weatherbeaten, ruddy-red but smiling faces. From across the room you can make out the fishing recap complete with the standard hands held three feet apart to demonstrate the length of the largest catch of the day.
I have more fun watching this action than joining in-it's nature's food chain at its finest.