Better late than never

Sadly, my school and work schedule has me limited to the days I can fish this time of year. Fishing 3-4 days a week and lucking into some fish isn't working for me anyore. So unfortunately I can't exactly chase the best conditions, I can only fish when my schedule will allow me.

On this day, the conditions were not exactly ideal. I even told some random guy on the beach (you know who you are ) that I wasn't expecting much and that I just needed to get wet.

All signs pointed to a skunk of a day. The wind was blowing 2degrees in the wrong direction, I was 12 minutes ahead of the optimal tide and the water was 2 shades of green too dark. The kelp was growing too slow and the clouds covered approximately 19% of the sky, which we all know is a recipe for disaster. I compared these numbers to the amplitudinal change of the max coefficient of the tides and set them equal the the degree in which the sun would be setting in relation to the horizon and was able to come up with about a 7.9379% (repeating of course) chance of successfully catching a fish. Now while most people would say ehhh, not today.... I had a long week and needed some time on the water regardless of this unfortunate calculation. When I got out to where I wanted to make bait, I dipped a test strip and found the pH of the water was too acidic. Fishing 101 here guys, FISH HATE ACIDIC WATER! The Alkalinity was spot on though, so I had a shred of hope. When I pulled my first mackerel into the boat I check it's marking. DAMN!!!! This fish is of a premium bloodline. I sampled the DNA quick and found this particular mack was a descendant of a mackerel I used to catch a fish last year. Things were really starting to look up. My angry grin started to turn into a tiny shred of a smile when I put that mack into my bait tank and he began to freak out. This bait in particular was fighting like he was about to sack Troy all by himself.
I caught some more demi-god baits and I threw them in the tank. Stocked and ready to go. I stood up to find my fishing buddy. He was too far away and I had a good feeling about where I wanted to fish., but I only had a small window of time to maximize my chance at landing my target species. I decided to chug for it because I knew the moon would only be optimally positioned in the sky for a few seconds before all hope was lost.

When I put my bait out, I sat there for a few minutes...No action... I knew it. I should have stayed at home and listened to the reports of how slow the fishing has been. I mean, that is the most accurate form of fish dope right? If people say it's slow, it must mean there are no fish anywhere. Not a chance. When I put together my initial calculation, I didn't even take those fishing reports into account, so my 7% was more like .07%. Alright, it's been 20 minutes, clearly there are no fish here, because that is always a sure sign. As I picked up my radio to tell my friend how much I hated this place and I'm never making this drive again, my bait starts to wiggle a little bit. Suddenly the hair on my neck starts to stand up. Oh no, could it be? Did I miss a calculation? There is no way in hell there could be a fish working around my bait. This is just a fluke. Clearly my mack saw a cute lady and just wanted to get some love. A few more wiggles.... damn he really wants to get on it! GO GET HIM LITTLE BUDDY!!!!!!!! YOU CAN DO IT!!!

Then, whack....whack... (Damn dude, no means no)

Then line starts peeling....

I know this feeling....this is a fish? No way... but I can't wait to find out.

Todays bite, tomorrows bite, or yesterdays bite... who knows when it's which.