full moon cycle, 11:33-12:46, cloudy skies
Greet, greet, greet. Why, hello. Welcome. The grunion (Leuresthes tenuis) did not disappoint for a second night in a row. I'm debating as to which Walker Scale rating to call this run. I'm leaning towards reporting it as a W-4. The character of this run was very different than the night before. It's difficult to say if there were more fish overall, but they were definitely more heavily concentrated in a much smaller area of beach and for a shorter amount of time. Andy walked it out and figured they stretched across about 15 yards wide at the most numerous, whereas the previous night they stretched at least 2-3 times that length. This
run didn't last long. In fact, it was pretty much done by high tide of
11:50. It's a good thing we arrived early. What struck us was that
these fish were significantly smaller in size than last night. Younger, maybe? The waves were extremely gentle, and we noted how loud the fish slapping sound was. Amazing. Charlie didn't show up until we were getting ready to leave.
The human activity on the pier was also very different from Saturday night, even though this was a holiday night. It was pretty much deserted, except for one lady I recognized from our annual Easter festivities and from around town. I was sad to discover she's obviously homeless. She seemed embarrassed and tried to hide in the porta potty (she kept peeking out to see if we were still standing there), so I didn't start a conversation with her. If I see her again during the daylight, I'll see what I can do for her. Sometimes I wonder if we're considered weirdos for going out in the middle of the night to watch fish. Seriously. We tried to rally friends to come out and meet us since this is such a rare local occurrence, the last time being the summer of 2007, six years ago! Even with lots of returned enthusiasm, only two former classmates of Andy's showed up. They're both teachers, one in elementary and the other in high school science. We walked the beach towards the cement structure and found another small patch of scouts and maybe 5-20 grunion per big wave. We laughed at how in past years, we would have been over the moon to see 20 grunion. It was a good night for us. Sigh.
