August, 1920 
FOREST AND STREAM 
427 
A few more boards and our camp will be complete 
belongings properly, but, like everything 
else, it came to a finish so with a final 
running over the list for possible forgot- 
ten articles, the excited boys bade me 
good night and I sought my bed. 
T HE morning dawned clear and bright 
and, after I had eaten a hearty 
breakfast the boys came over, so, 
with packs slung and rods in hand, we all 
oiled abroad the N. J. Central train, and 
early in the afternoon arrived at our des- 
tination, Seaside Park. 
“We’ll first go up to the store for the 
grub,” said I to the impatient fellows, 
“then take a tramp, for about two miles 
down the beach, where we’ll go into 
camp.” 
The grub memorandum contained quite 
a formidable list, pancake flour, butter, 
eggs, bacon, coffee, salt, prunes, potatoes, 
matches, crackers, canned beans, canned 
soup, nut meats and canned peaches and 
pears for dessert. 
“If we had to lug all this outfit,” said 
I, “we would not take so many heavy 
things, but I wrote to a friend here who 
will drive down through the brush road 
back of the dunes and he will take this 
heavy stuff to the Life Saving Station. 
We’ll breeze down the beach; it will be 
easy walking as the tide is low and the 
sand will be hard.” 
The purchase of our grub was but a 
matter of a few minutes, in fact, we had 
it all in a pile outside by the time my 
friend arrived with the jitney. We 
packed it hurriedly and again we were 
off down the board-walk along the ocean’s 
front to its end and to where the sand 
lay before us. The walk delighted the 
boys, as none of them was familiar with 
such an unfrequented beach. Now and 
then a flock of “teeters” would buzz along, 
an occasional gull with his querulous cry, v 
a crow, and other wild birds. To the 
left rolled the mighty surges of the ocean, 
on the right arose the dunes, covered with 
moss, salt-grass and bayberry bushes and, 
in between, lay the flat beach stretching 
away and disappearing into the haze of 
the distant point. 
When we reached the Life Saving Sta- 
tion we found that our stuff had arrived 
in good shape, so after a chat with the 
Guards and a good drink from the kitchen 
pump, we filled our water buckets, 
shouldered our packs and plowed down 
the beach for another hundred yards to 
a spot where I knew was located a fine 
“hole”. 
“What do you mean by a ‘hole’? All 
I see is water,” said Bill. “Well,” said 
I, “you will soon be able to tell, by the 
look of the water, what the formation 
of the bottom is. A ‘hole’, or deep spot 
is here and that is just what we want; 
you see particles of shell-fish and all sorts 
of feed wash into these deep spots and 
the fish follow after them. That’s why 
it’s good fishing here.” 
“Well, now for the tents, boys; I’ll 
see if I can’t find some boards, to make 
a table and some seats; Tom, you rustle 
some stakes for our tent and you two 
put up your little dog tents,” said I. “It’s 
well to get a shelter up as soon as pos- 
sible as a storm sometimes comes up in 
a jiffy and it’s well to be prepared.” 
The tents being small, and requiring 
but few stakes, went up in a hurry but 
soon the youngsters dropped a hint now 
and then, that a little lunch would not 
be sneezed at. For cooking, each boy 
had carried his scout kit, while I had 
brought my own outfit. This gave each 
of the fellows a fry-pan, cup, pail and 
dish and, of course, a knife, fork and 
spoon. My kit contained in addition to 
these articles a little folding wire grate. 
“Now, let’s see, we don’t want to spend 
a lot of time over our meal because in 
My big channel bass 
about a half an hour the tide will be 
just right for one of you boys to snake 
out a weakfish or a croaker. Guess 
we’ll just have cocoa, cornbread and but- 
ler, jam, and some pork and beans — I 
think that ought to hold us for a while. 
If we hadn’t had a long tiresome trip, 
we’d just have a handful of uncooked 
prunes and a few crackers — maybe a few 
nuts and raisins too — there is lots of 
nourishment in that.” 
A stick driven slapty-wise into the 
sand, cajled a dingle stick, -was used to 
suspend a pail of cocoa over the fire. 
On the little grate soon simmered a pan 
of pork and beans and in the two fry- 
pans of my kit (clamped together to 
form a baker) was a dough that was 
fast rising into corn-bread. “Turn it out, 
it’s done now,” yelled a famished young- 
ster, and shortly after the first rush — 
no bread, no beans, no cocoa in sight — 
nothing but the empties. 
The pots and pans were hastily but 
thoroughly scoured with sand and sea 
water until clean, then turned upside 
down on the table that I had made out 
of a couple of boxes and planks picked 
up on the beach. Even before putting 
up tents it is well to construct some 
sort of a table or rack in order to keep 
things out of the sand. Anything laid 
down on the beach disappears in the sand 
like magic, the slightest breath of air will 
bury an article as if snow had drifted 
over it. This is the one big rule in 
sand camping: Don’t lay anything down 
on the sand! 
1 PUT the rods together, fixed the reels 
solidly in place and then rigged the 
hook ends. This was interesting to 
the boys who had never before seen a surf 
rig. I attached a three-way swivel to 
the line, to another arm of the swivel I 
fixed a four ounce pyramid sinker by a 
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 464 ) 
