{"id":8270,"date":"2018-08-05T03:01:59","date_gmt":"2018-08-05T07:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/?p=8270"},"modified":"2018-08-05T03:03:52","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T07:03:52","slug":"2018-08-04-i-pay-my-toefl-proctor-fishing-at-rockaway-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/?p=8270","title":{"rendered":"2018-08-04: I pay my TOEFL Proctor, Fishing at Rockaway Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What a day today.<\/p>\n<p>Today is the first day I hired my own proctor out of my own pocket after raising my rate. Since Vivian had left, I paid her brother $73 in cash today. If it's not the siblings: Alfred &amp; Jessica, I would have to find some high school \/ college students from churches or local schools for a lower rate to begin with.<\/p>\n<p>Then, Nadia and I were able to visit Rockaway Beach together for the first time. This is the one in Fort Tilden. I swam still, despite the shocking appearance of a small 4-foot shark last time, only not too far this time. I think that shark was probably caught by some angler who threw it back to sea half conscious. It seemed rather weak.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, after being brushed by something on my foot near the shore, I immediately realized that I should start setting my fishing rod, which I brought, just in case. The last catch was at Breezy Point and it was just a Sea Robin - useless keeper but plentiful. So, I had almost given up, even with the thought that what brushed my foot was soft but strong enough to be some sort of fish.<\/p>\n<p>Now I've watched John Skinner's shore fishing flukes at Long Island Sound and was intrigued:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1ddROb-z0-4\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So, I tried his method of baiting for Summer Flounders at the shore. I was giving up after a while but then I saw that my fake marinated worm bait's tail has bite marks. So I tried again. There was a stronger pull, but it was let go. I am now convinced that this is a fluke's work. They are good at swimming with the bait when being caught, thereby I would not realize that I've caught anything. This also allows them to free themselves easily.<\/p>\n<p>So, the second time I felt a slight pull, I quickly reeled in and pulled the rod back. However, my line suddenly got caught under the spool. I knew I couldn't wait to fix my line, so I just grab my line and ran back against the sea, not giving the possible fish any chance of escape. Wow...there it was, a not so big flounder. I was excited. It certainly made my day.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HtQ9OKNHdCk\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But I already knew, from afar, that this is not a keeper. It's against NYC recreational rule to keep a Summer Flounder less than 19 inches long. But I had to show Nadia (And yes, I have the kind of ego that's hoping other strangers, including the angler who's 50 feet away from me to see it too, because he apparently had a bigger fishing rod than me and I don't think he caught anything yet).<\/p>\n<p>I had easily caught some large sand fleas and shown Nadia. Any fisherman knows that the prized fish are either Flounder or Striped Bass. Nevertheless, I had to let it go. I held it in my hand as long as I could, hoping that I could still flash my ego around for others to sea, I really can't tell if anyone else saw it, there might be one or two, but I was wearing goggle, my vision wasn't clear despite the fact that it's a special prescription goggle, due to water marks.<\/p>\n<p>As for why I was wearing goggle. I was trying what I called: Swim Fishing \ud83d\ude42 It should be self-explanatory. While others were doing conventional fishing - standing on the dry land and casting their long and mighty and probably much much expensive fishing rod, I was jumping in the waters like a sea monkey. From within the shallow end of the water, casting forward, backward, side ways, any way I could. I had planned only to swim in the beginning, remember?<\/p>\n<p>Before the swim, we set up a semi-tent for the first time that Nadia spotted on sales in Costo a few years back:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JhuRzJnHZxU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is also the second time I noticed someone (a young lady) thought this is a nude beach. Just at 3'clock from our tent in the video. This is the third time I'm at this beach. I also saw a mother took off her cloth playing with her baby boy by the beach the first time I was here. Unlike Brighton Beach which was packed with latinos and blacks, this beach is much less crowded and a haven for what looked like Russians. And the Russians certainly treat their beaches as nude beaches, for toddlers to old old folks.<\/p>\n<p>Anyhow, I'm not here for the nude beach, I was here to swim and catch some fish and maybe fly the drone, which didn't happen today. I wished I could fly the drone above the sea in search of large sea monsters. But time did not allow it.<\/p>\n<p>After coming home, I learned remove the spool by turning the drag. As the cover goes, I could see so many loops of line inside the spool. I had to cut all the tangled line anyway because I don't have time to untangle them. I also checked <a href=\"https:\/\/tides4fishing.com\/us\/new-york\/brooklyn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fishing4Tides.com<\/a>, and learned that I was actually fishing at the best moment: 7:30-8:00PM EST as the tides dropped to lowest at 9:16PM. Sun was setting at around 8:07PM. The waves weren't too strong, which was not the case the other times I was here. It was probably 1-3 foot high. Fishing4Tides showed 8-9PM was the time with most fish, it gave 6+ fish icons, that's more than the usual 4 fish icons for most lowest tides.<\/p>\n<p>This has certainly built my confidence in fishing. Were it not for the tangled lines, I might have actually caught a keeper. But then, it could be 9PM by then and I had to face a grumpy wife driving home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a day today. Today is the first day I hired my own proctor out of my own pocket after raising my rate. Since Vivian had left, I paid her brother $73 in cash today. If it's not the siblings: &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/?p=8270\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,15,7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology","category-faults","category-general","category-reflection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8270"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8273,"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8270\/revisions\/8273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nycphantom.com\/journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}