Fishing a Nor'Easter

With family activities in Saturday morning, and a nor'easter moving in for the afternoon, I decided to forgo the boat and head out for some surf fishing. Most of my fishing over the last few seasons has been from my boat or 'yak, with surfcasting trips few and far between. It's kind of hard to imagine, as I grew up learning to fish on the Outer Banks, chasing blues, stripers, drum and more up and down beaches from Corolla to Hatteras Point.  While I spent most of my summers down there, it was the fall and spring weekend getaways that I looked forward to most. My dad, grandfather and I would take off on Fridays to get in a solid weekend. If a nor'easter was churning up the coast, all the better for fishing. As soon as I got my license I was loading up gear to make the weekend trek myself or with friends down to run the beaches in search of fish. Our place was in Duck, but I could just as often be found sleeping in my Jeep wherever I found a bite, or maybe one of the long since demolished pier motels like the Tan-A-Rama. Standing in the storm last night, rain pelting off my jacket and salt spray dripping from my face, these memories came flooding back, and the whole experience was truly cathartic. I didn't get a whiff of a fish, but made a promise to myself not to let so much time slip by before my next outing, and to get Danny out with me to experience life in the surf.

Pictured: Harkness SP, the Tan-A-Rama a bit before it's demise and back in it's heydey. I remember my first summer down to the Outer Banks in the mid-70's, when the old beach road was the only road and Kill devil Hills looked like this. I barely recognize the places now. May as well be the northern Jersey shore.