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Skitterpop, I love you! Great line and for this thread it was brilliant!
Canal fishing is a genre all it's own. There are methods there and plugs that were designed and made strictly with canal fishing use in mind ( Stan Gibb's pencil poppers, Cast-a-Lures slant face popper and Polaris were designed for canal fishing before anything else)
There is another place where the smae type of fishing exists on the east coast, the Delaware Canal. Our railroad bridge and thiers are twins built and designed by the same company. The tide extremes are no where near as great but the do have "breaking tides" and guys do fish them as we fish ours. No it's not surfcasting and it does alighn itself with shore fishing but's it's an entrely unique experience in bass fishing to be sure.
True surfcasting is done on sand beaches facing the open Atlantic where the structure changes day to day and the surfcaster has to constantly rethink his/her approach. Fishing the rocky ledges of the Elizabeth Islands and RI is a type of surfcasting but not surfcasting in it's purest form. The terrain once learned is easier to master as there are no major structural changes from day to day or week to week or season to season only the availability of bait and fish dictates success, once learned, affect the outcome. Change there is only significantly realized after a major weather event most likely being a hurricane and that is a rare occurence, yes standing on a slippery ledge in a high surf is very close and at times dangerous but the amount of guess work in figuring out the how and where is much less. Same goes for the canal and add live bait, fresh dead bait and it gets even easier,the hardest part being getting to your spot, which through little or no access and weather conditions, can be a dilemma.
A high surf fisherman, on an open Atlantic sand beach as we have on the outer Cape, Monomoy,Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, the southern shores of eastern Long Island, New Jersey, the eastern shore of Maryland, Virginia and the Outer Banks is surfcasting in it's highest form and I firmly believe taxes the skills and knowledge of a fisherman more than any other type of fishing thereby making it the most rewarding when everything you know, have learned and is put before you and analyzed and a decision made, lays a gleaming bass at your feet in a rush of white foam and sand.
But this was a discussion of the canal and I do love the canal and was once a confirmed rat but it isn't the most challenging place to fish that we have.
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