As my years have passed, I’ve learned about who I am. This is deeper knowledge, informing what motivates and makes me happy. Likewise, I better understand the people around me —how their own desires and needs can be so different from my own. And I’m learning that real wisdom may eventually come from seeing all of this with eyes wide open, from appreciating all the facets that make us individuals and finding ways to join the common ground.

This was summer seven in the surf for the Swentoskys. Our family beach trips are also fishing trips, and this all started seven years ago . . .

READ: Troutbitten | A Fish Out of Fresh Water

It’s stunning to read back through that article and remember the feelings. Watching the boys experience it all for the first time, while also learning so much new for myself, was extraordinary, and being a Dad has been the greatest challenge and the preeminent reward of my life.

The seasons have come and gone. The summers and the surf fishing sessions have been logged. And none of them are ever to be repeated. The thing about life is you only get to do it once. And the thing about age is you don’t get much perspective on experience until you’ve collected enough of it to realize how precious every moment really is.

Troutbitten is nearing its ten-year anniversary. I now have an editorial record of twenty percent of my life. And while a solid two-thirds of Troutbitten is tactics based, there’s enough of me in here, enough of my life and relationships blended with this history, that it’s all very personal.

This is the value of a vacation: It’s about seeing your own life from a novel perspective, then selecting the things you wish to keep and the things you wish to change. After our latest trip to LBI, New Jersey, I’m full of new ideas for my family life and my fishing life.

“Nothing opens the aperture of life better than time away from your daily routine. Vacations are an intermission between acts, providing time to stretch your legs, consider what you’ve seen and prepare for what’s to come.” (Perspective, From the Salt to the Limestone – August 23, 2023)

The Fishing

I fish most every morning and evening when we’re at the beach — dawn to late morning and around 6:30 to dark. So that’s approximately ten shifts. Multiply that by seven years, add in a two-day affair last September, with a solo trip to Island Beach State Park, and I’ve logged at best seventy-five shifts in the salt.

That’s a mere drop in the bucket. It’s equal to a single spring season on our trout water here, because I’m on the rivers five days a week. But seventy-five saltwater shifts is enough time that I finally have confidence in many aspects of what I’m doing.

After much experimentation in the first couple of years, I simplified my approach to targeting fluke (summer flounder), with bucktails on a spinning rod, surfcasting into the giant ocean. A few years ago, I grew confident enough to add some presentations with soft plastics on jig heads, but my approach to the water has remained true — cover water, find fish, ride the strike zone and vary the presentations accordingly.

Remarkably, I can honestly say that I fished well this year. And that felt good. This is the first year where my obsessions remained on the water. This time, I didn’t come off the beach feeling like I needed to read books on bucktails or watch videos on beach structure. I get it now — at least to the point where I have enough experience to answer my own questions or develop theories for what to try next.

My first shift on Saturday evening was the only time where I felt out of rhythm. But having been through all of this before, I gave myself enough grace to accept the process of getting my sea legs back. On each day, with every shift, I spent more time in the zone, just fishing and working water, than ever before.

In the zone — I’d argue that most anglers pursue fishing for the time-out-of-mind experience. Many styles of fishing allow for it, but surfcasting draws me in unlike anything I’ve ever done.

I think it’s the waves.

The beaches of LBI are steep enough to form crashing waves all the way up and down the eighteen-mile barrier island, even at low tide. The rhythms and sounds of it all get inside me until I’m casting and retrieving, jigging and gliding, almost in a trance.

My friend, Mike Garrison, recently published an article about what he enjoys in his own fishing. Mike knows that simplicity over versatility makes him happy, and I believe it leads him to that same feeling of time-out-of-mind. So by keeping the lure choices simple enough while I’m surfcasting, I don’t think about much of anything but the bucktail in the waves. And then, even that becomes automatic. That feeling — the chance to be in tune and in rhythm with the water — is why I fish.

I’m not fishing for the fluke. I’m fishing for feelings.

I said this to Joey during one difficult evening on the beach. As the sun retired on the bay-water somewhere over the dunes behind us, Joey kind of smirked and shook his head at my statement. That’s fair, because at fifteen, he doesn’t yet know what makes him happy while fishing. He just knows that he likes it. And while we both will acknowledge the frustration of a slow bite, I still walk away satisfied by fishing well and entering the zone off and on for a few hours. Joey leaves satisfied too, but he may not know why he feels it so completely.

This experience of fishing the salt (now for seven years) has opened my eyes to what others go through while trout fishing. The game is complex at first. It’s overwhelming, confusing and frustrating. There’s a longing for the next fishing trip, just to get some casts in the water and answer the ongoing questions about the latest thing we’ve researched. There’s a desperation that comes with new anglers.

Of course I realize this from the clients I guide and the messages I receive. But these seven years of experience and just seventy-five shifts in the salt have driven home the reality that nothing beats time on the water.

More importantly, there’s a process of evolution in our fishing that cannot be rushed — instead, it’s better off being accepted. And yet, it might take the wisdom of age to ever understand all of that.

Happy fishing is about finding your own goals. And apparently, my own saltwater goals align with no one else’s. In ten shifts I saw just one other angler doing something similar — covering miles of beach and targeting fluke. I’m sure the natural solitude is what has drawn me into all this in the first place. The beach is mine at dawn. And I’m joined by a few happy vacationers and shark fishermen at dusk. I fish because that’s where we are. And, like the trout fishing here, it’s a tough game, but it’s a fair one. And I’ve come to understand that small refinements make all the difference — especially when a little luck is on your side.

Every year, on the way home, I consider what might have changed. How did I grow into surfcasting after these ten shifts?

Peace. That’s my answer.

I finally walked the beaches with a peace of mind that I’ve been working toward for years. I fished hard, and I fished well. Most times I caught fish, and sometimes I didn’t. But that peace with the fishing remained throughout. That’s big. And it’s something I can build upon.

Fish hard, friends.

READ: Troutbitten | A Fish Out of Fresh Water
READ: Troutbitten | Surf and Salt — LBI, Summer 2019
READ:  Troutbitten | Perspective, From the Salt to the Limestone
READ: Troutbitten | Lessons from the Salt (2022) — Strike Zones, Sensitivity and Persistence
READ: Troutbitten | What Fishing Does to Your Brain

** NOTE ** If you are an East coast surfcaster, please get in touch. The salt is a mystery to me, and I’ll take all the guidance I can get.

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Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com