Lou
Grandolfo, Pat Murray and I stood on the upper-level
deck of a Tiki Island home one night last week and
stared, slack-jawed, into the green, hypnotic glow cast
by two underwater lights on the bottom of West Bay.
There was a slight ripple of the surface and, just
beneath that rippled surface, at least 200 speckled
trout.
Night fishing is an excellent alternative to prime
fishing spots or driving half the night to beat the
sunrise. All the better, devices on the market now make
the activity more pleasant and more productive.
"It's almost surreal," Murray said in a hushed tone.
"I could stand here all night watching those fish. It's
incredible to get to see the way they react when a
shrimp or a shad comes along."
As if on cue, a fat shrimp kicked to the surface among
all those hungry mouths. Bad move on the the shrimp's
part. One speck, backlit so that its every move was
plainly visible, wheeled 180 degrees within its own
length and took a vicious but errant swipe. The shrimp
hopped, skipped - and landed right in the gunsights of
yet another trout. That second fish did not miss, and
the shrimp vanished in one of those trademark "pops"
feeding trout make when they slurp a meal off the
surface.
Traditional nighttime fishing lights offended the two
with the way they flooded nearby homes with unwanted
illumination. That, and the way they attracted hordes of
gnats and mosquitoes, and the
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way they
sucked thousands of watts of electricity.
We left that first
house, which faces the open bay, and slipped up on
another set of lights in one of Tiki Island's interior
canals.
The big fish idled over the warm bulb, which heats to
more than 100 degrees, about two feet beneath the
surface and waiting patiently for the baitfish they knew
would be drawn to the glow. A menhaden skittered out of
the shadows and, as was the fate of that shrimp outside
the island, was taken almost immediately.
Enough was enough, Murray and I grabbed fishing rods.
It took him only two or three casts with a Corky
suspending plug to draw a strike from a trout of nearly
20 inches. I countered with a fly rod, throwing a
Clouser minnow, and scored a fish only an inch or so
smaller.
Notably, after those two fish were caught, it was
several minutes before any trout
reappeared in the lights. Murray,
who also lives on the island and fishes regularly at
night under old style lights, said the fish's retreat
into the darker water was typical.
"They'll go away if they here you
walking up," Grandolfo said, tapping his foot heavily on
the wood dock. At the sound, visible trout sunk slowly
but surely from sight. After we stood quietly for a
minute or so, they reappeared at our feet,
one by one, and
resumed their feeding activity.
I talked with Grandolfo
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Thursday
afternoon. He was amped with excitement over a sighting
the previous night, beneath the same light from which
Murray and I caught those trout.
"There was a school of reds in there," Grandolfo said,
"Must have been at least a dozen of them, all at least
23 or 24 inches long. A mullet about six inches long
showed up."
Same thing happened to the mullet as to the menhaden
and the shrimp, only with a lot more violence, Grandolfo
said, because the fish were big reds and not little
trout.
Grandolfo's rigs are built to standards beyond what
the government requires of
underwater lights. They light at dusk and shut
themselves off at dawn. A ground fault interruption (GFI)
outlet is required at the installation sight.
All of which is great news for waterfront homeowners,
a group that does not include me.
One of this system's greatest attributes - the
non-necessity of illumination above the surface, which
reduces insect problems - also can be a hindrance A few
public piers on the coast have installed his lights, and
others are in various stages of negotiation for them.
Worth a look wherever you can find them. Count on some
lost sleep. For information on the Aquatic Attractor
underwater light, call Lou Grandolfo at (409)933-4438.
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