There's a funny thing about SW fishing from shore in NJ. There are almost always fish there to be caught if you know where to look and when. I spent a decade crawling the rocks from LBI to Union Beach to learn where to be and when. I still struck out from time to time, but more often than not, I caught a few fish just about every time, sometimes really nice fish, and sometimes a lot of them. It all comes down to the time you put on the water and the people you find who can teach you. There really is a greater time requirement for learning SW from shore than any other kind of fishing I know of, especially with a fly rod. You have to be willing to take a few skunks right on the chin, one after another, until you can develop enough confidence (or faith, probably more accurately) that you will be able to pull some fish on every trip. It can happen, but you need to be able to eat a lot of skunk early on. I haven't been as dedicated to the salt since 2012 or so, but I intend on heading back to the shore this year in a couple weeks. Albies will be at the Hook any day now, and once the mullet get going, first light will be a cinch for catching schoolie bass and blues. Everything I'm hearing about bunker has been good, and I know they've had fish up North solid all summer.
This might be a good fall to focus in on some shore fishing.
