Stone Cold
Winter is no excuse to quit fishing jetties. By Doug Pike
Photos by Larry Bozka J TIDE
ETTY FISHING is an unsolvable mystery to some people, but if you understand the basics, you can stand out like a Hercule Poirot among so many bung- ling Inspector Clouseaus on the rocks.
Mild winter or harsh, coastal jetties
remain valid fishing venues from Texas to Maine. In short, they provide what fish need: shelter and food. Anywhere those two fundamental ele- ments are present, there will be fish. It
may not be the same fish as are pre- sent in summer, and there may seem fewer of them, but there will be fish both large and small. Any significant pile of rocks in the water can be productive in winter, but coastal jetties are atypically fishy for simple reasons.
Sunlight hits the water about the same anywhere. Its warmth pene- trates more deeply into clear water than cloudy, but water is water, and sunlight is sunlight. Water warms
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quickly under direct sun, but it is equally quick to relinquish that heat once the sun sets, a breeze stirs, or heavy overcast settles into place. Rocks don’t warm quite so quickly as a bay or ocean, but after a full day of cloudless sky and light wind, the heat they gather tends to linger, often into the night. It’s that incremental warmth, like pulling the blanket up to your neck on a chill night, that gathers and holds cold-blooded fish. The heat transferred to water near
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