On the Outer Cape I never wade into open surf. Usually I am twenty feet back. Lots of nights the fish are in the wash. It don't make sense to walk on 'em. There are bars that people wade out to at low tide as they feel they have to get outside to reach the fish. What they don't realize is the even forty pounders think nothing of wallowing over a bar in less than a foot of water to scrounge bait that inhabits the three foot depths inside the bar to the beach proper. Especially at night.
Big surf has a lot of dynamic forces that will try to drag you into Triton's realm. Looking up into a cold green wave at two in the morning that you only noticed coming as it blotted out the stars is unerving to say the least and if survived runs the whole experience.
Estuaries have there pitfalls as well. Mucky spots and my favorite the holes left by clammers who worked the low tide and down you go as you wade in the dark over the same spot at the high turn. Sedge bankings are fun and having witnessed along with Art Crago, a fisahing friend of mine, a section collapse into the creek that was where we were standing minutes before casting flies at Scorton one
day is really an eye opener. 30 feet by five feet wide by six feet high just tumbling into the creek. Scary.
I fish a lot of rocks on an island you all love in mid summer. Corkers on and out and up you go onto rocks 30 feet from shore in six feet of water. No problem getting up onto them but getting down is really hairy and when a dragger goes by and sends in a seven set of four footers where your boots are usually six inches out of the water and it's time to perspire while watching them come at you. Your going over, no question. A lonely feeling in the wee hours.
To wade safely, anywhere, you must know your turf and what can happen. Respect the law of averages and calculate the risk versus the gain and it never pays to walk through a school of feeding fish.
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