Well, Mike finally broke me down and got me to meet up with him at a local inlet to fish. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy fishing with Mike, he's good people! It's the inlet. I just never seem to do well there. At least not consistently. I ran to the area after school with all of my gear. I popped into Boulevard to see if there were any decent reports. The big report was that there was an abundance of snot grass. Everywhere. Yeah... this just gets better. I arrived, and began to put on my waders and boots. A guy approached me to ask if there was a better place to fish? He explained how it was windy and Grassy and he had only landed a dinky flounder all day. So I gave him a spot to try and surveyed the water. It was definitely windy, there were white caps. Yup, it just keeps getting better. So, with very little hope, I trudged down to meet up with Mike. When I arrived Mike seemed quite jubilant as he already had a nice blue on his stringer, and was just bitten off. Maybe there was hope after all. So, we waded out to our waists and cast. Mike hooked another blue, and then we were both bitten off. I gave Mike a Zman to try, and I put one on too. Blues can't readily bite through them. And they did the trick. Mike and I landed a nice blue each and added them to his stringer. Mike likes smoked bluefish. Reminded me of an old client, Ralph. We continued to fish as the sun began to set. The tide turned to head out, and terns dive bombed the water here and there picking off spearing. As I was reeling in one of my hundreds of casts, it suddenly stopped, rather close, and took off. After a spirited battle I landed a nice 21" striper. A nice change from the blues. Mike struck next with a notice 24.5" striper. Another great fight, and quick release. Thena short while later my life e was hammered again, but the hook somehow managed to come loose. It felt nice at least. A few casts later the beast struck again in the same spot. This time the hook stayed put and the battle was on. I fi ally wrangled the striper to the sand. It was a solid 31" striper. I was going to release it, but Mike said he'd love to have it over for dinner. So, onto the stringer it went. My next cast was a nice chopper blue that swam away. And then Mike got a dink bass. The sun was quite low at this point, and the tide was dropping fast. The stringer fish were running out of water so Mike went to move it into deeper water. Next thing I hear Mike in a bit of a panic. He forgot the striner wasn't attached to his sand spike, but merely looped through. When he pulled the spike up the striper saw it's opportunity to bolt. It swam right past me dragging the three blues along with it. Before we could fathom what had happened, they were gone. No smoked blues or tasty striper for Mike and his family. We laughed trying to imagine some guy flounder fishing ending up snagging that mass of fish and blue cable stringer. What a haul! We fished a bit longer. The guy just up from us landed a dink striper. The grass and current started to pick up, so we called it quits. I am happy to say, I was wrong. It was a great trip, with a good friend. We had a blast! If only the stringer hadn't swam away... Tight Lines!