The Barefoot Author
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Most everyone has a happy place — Where they can count their blessings, be thankful for what they have, and think about the next stages in their lives. For me, it's the beach. I'm lucky to live in South Philadelphia, where it's 15 minutes to the Atlantic City Expressway, the gateway to the Jersey Shore. I've fished Island Beach State Park, Barnegat Light on Long Beach Island, Atlantic City, and my favorite, Cape May
Clearing my mind
I love barefoot on the beach. September, October, and November are my favorite months to fish in what Columbus called the Western Ocean. The water is warm, the vacationers have thinned out, and it's a beautiful place on lovely days when the trade winds are calm (another Columbus term). I remember a Mansfield physics professor I had named John Dowling; he had a poster in his classroom: Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits. There's not a time I'm on the beach when I don't think about Dr. Dowling's poster. Sometimes, I think about my book, Alone in the Fight. Or the book after that. But most of the time, I think about nothing.
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I usually don't sit like I am in the photo. September is flounder month, and to catch flounder, I throw my jig head with an attached gulp (see photo) about 30 to 50 yards and slowly bring it in, jerking the tip of the rod every few feet, called jigging. Sometimes, a flounder will follow it and decide on dinner at the last minute. I've caught them in water as shallow as eight inches. Also, it would help if you moved up and down the beach because flounder don't stay put.​ Or, I enjoy climbing onto a jetty and letting the current bring in fish (many species of fish hunt for dinner near the jetties). But fishing is only half the fun of barefoot on the beach, leading me to Dr. Dowling's poster. Sometimes I think of nothing, also called meditation. It's not easy to think of nothing; try it sometime, and fishing barefoot on the beach is the only place I can do it.​​
Bait Recipe from the book: Dead Kids Don't Speak
In the early sixties, the river was a fishing wonderland. We waded through shallow parts of the river out to the rocks and cast out into the current. We used homemade sinkers to keep the bait down — carp and catfish are bottom feeders. When the rod tip jiggled, a carp or catty tasted the bait. The big carp and catfish put up a great fight. On hot days when the fish stopped biting in the afternoon, we stripped down to our underpants and dove into the river before going home or into Manayunk to sell our booty. We often walked along the railroad tracks and through the Flat Rock Tunnel to fish and swim at the foot of the Flat Rock Dam. It was also a great place to build rafts and float the slow water on the backside of the dam. No kid that I recall ever went over the dam."
Poverty beach, below where the sharks hang out. Its name originated from the early 1900's when the poorer classes were not allowed on the beaches of Cape May. They had to come here, 2.5 miles from downtown Cape May. It is an isolated, hard to find and get to beach and my favorite place to fish. There is a deep drop off just beyond the waves where sharks come looking for plankton.And there are no swimmers. It would be suicide to swim here.
What I use to catch flounder: A 1/4 inch jig with a white gulp attached, plus one or two trailers not shown
A beautiful sunrise at Island Beach State Park
Yesterday — Growing up on the Hill
From the book: Dead Kids Don't Speak
In 1964, the kids who lived in Belmont Hills didn’t have cell phones, laptops or desktops, and they indeed didn’t play video games. Technology back then consisted of a rotary phone and, if you were lucky, a color television. The Hill was one giant video game for us, but it had to be played outdoors and with other kids. The Hill video game came
equipped with sizable patches of woods, streams, hills, large backyards, a river, and enough stuff for us to do that we didn’t have time to get into trouble. Nothing changed when the sun went down; we just did things in the dark.
The Schuylkill River was less than a mile trek down the hill, and there we fished for catfish and carp. We never ate the fish we caught but took them beneath the El in Manayunk and sold them for dimes and quarters. Skippy showed me
how to make carp bait from cornmeal mixed with molasses. It was a homemade invention, and the carp loved it. We fished from the rocks in the middle of the Schuylkill, visible upstream from the Green Lane Bridge.
In the early sixties, the river was a fishing wonderland. We waded through shallow parts of the river out to the rocks and cast out into the current. We used homemade sinkers to keep the bait down — carp and catfish are bottom feeders. When the rod tip jiggled, a carp or catty tasted the bait. The big carp and catfish put up a great fight. On hot days when the fish stopped biting in the afternoon, we stripped down to our underpants and dove into the river before going home or into Manayunk to sell our booty. We often walked along the railroad tracks and through the Flat Rock Tunnel to fish and swim at the foot of the Flat Rock Dam. It was also a great place to build rafts and float the slow water on the backside of the dam. No kid that I recall ever went over the dam."
Contact the author at: Thebarefootauthor@proton.me
