Meadowbrook Drawbridge Dogfish Report

Avenger

Well-Known Angler
Since the RR strike was farking up traffic, I elected to take the day off and accept an invite from my friend to waste a day washing bait.

We initially set up on the south side of the draw, and I promptly hooked up a world-class Dogfish. A little while later my friend did the same. I suggested a relocation. So we moved to the north side. That's when things got exciting. Our first anchoring attempt didn't take so we hauled it back to reset, and the windlass jammed. While I'm trying to figure out why the chain was spitting out the side of the thing, the captain went below and gave a hard pull on the rode. That unjammed the whole thing. Fortunately, I was still hanging on to the chain, because the captain had broken the rope to chain splice. Well, cr@p. 😲 Now I have to do another study on how to do that splice. I did it for another friend once before, but that was a few years ago.

Short story long, we shifted to the spare anchor and the manual windlass. We avoided multiple resets, because that windlass makes a terrible whining noise every time we have to pull the anchor up again. It's always the same noise, but it just keeps getting worse. "Wasn't this spot good enough? This anchor is heavy. Do we have to use so much rode?" Honestly, sometimes I'm amazed they still let me on the boat.

Tide was near peak when we got settled.

IMG_20260518_094237903_HDR.webp


The captain was successful in meeting another Dogfish. After that the only thing that was successful were the eight Osprey that showed up. It was hard to tell, but it looked like they were picking up Bunker.

Then the real excitement started. There were workers on the bridge, mostly running leaf blowers. Every time one if them had to cross the draw they'd shut down traffic. Okay, that makes sense. What didn't make sense was once traffic was locked down they had to keep running that #&@$! siren at full blast. And we're not talking about just the time it took to walk over the draw span. It just went on and on and on. The shortest one I timed was over three and a half minutes. That's a long time to keep your fingers in your ears.

Final rant. Our illustrious governor's pandering to the Washville lobby prohibits washing your own car, supposedly to protect out waterways. But this blowhole with the leaf blower is blowing all kinds of debris off the bridge into the water. How is that okay? :mad:

IMG_20260518_104813429_HDR.webp


Oh well. It was still better than a good day at work.

And in the immortal words of Lt Columbo, "One more thing." We had a friend that used to go to a lot of trade shows, and he'd bring back all the koozies he could lay hands on. Between the captain and I, we could open a koozie store. Do you think there were any on the boat? I had to improvise with the Captain's gear.

IMG_20260518_125114825_HDR.webp


Like I said, I'm really surprised they still let me on the boat.
 
Since the RR strike was farking up traffic, I elected to take the day off and accept an invite from my friend to waste a day washing bait.

We initially set up on the south side of the draw, and I promptly hooked up a world-class Dogfish. A little while later my friend did the same. I suggested a relocation. So we moved to the north side. That's when things got exciting. Our first anchoring attempt didn't take so we hauled it back to reset, and the windlass jammed. While I'm trying to figure out why the chain was spitting out the side of the thing, the captain went below and gave a hard pull on the rode. That unjammed the whole thing. Fortunately, I was still hanging on to the chain, because the captain had broken the rope to chain splice. Well, cr@p. 😲 Now I have to do another study on how to do that splice. I did it for another friend once before, but that was a few years ago.

Short story long, we shifted to the spare anchor and the manual windlass. We avoided multiple resets, because that windlass makes a terrible whining noise every time we have to pull the anchor up again. It's always the same noise, but it just keeps getting worse. "Wasn't this spot good enough? This anchor is heavy. Do we have to use so much rode?" Honestly, sometimes I'm amazed they still let me on the boat.

Tide was near peak when we got settled.

View attachment 115633

The captain was successful in meeting another Dogfish. After that the only thing that was successful were the eight Osprey that showed up. It was hard to tell, but it looked like they were picking up Bunker.

Then the real excitement started. There were workers on the bridge, mostly running leaf blowers. Every time one if them had to cross the draw they'd shut down traffic. Okay, that makes sense. What didn't make sense was once traffic was locked down they had to keep running that #&@$! siren at full blast. And we're not talking about just the time it took to walk over the draw span. It just went on and on and on. The shortest one I timed was over three and a half minutes. That's a long time to keep your fingers in your ears.

Final rant. Our illustrious governor's pandering to the Washville lobby prohibits washing your own car, supposedly to protect out waterways. But this blowhole with the leaf blower is blowing all kinds of debris off the bridge into the water. How is that okay? :mad:

View attachment 115634

Oh well. It was still better than a good day at work.

And in the immortal words of Lt Columbo, "One more thing." We had a friend that used to go to a lot of trade shows, and he'd bring back all the koozies he could lay hands on. Between the captain and I, we could open a koozie store. Do you think there were any on the boat? I had to improvise with the Captain's gear.

View attachment 115635

Like I said, I'm really surprised they still let me on the boat.
We had the same issue east of where you were in the state channel world class Dogfish
 
I'm nervous about anchoring near bridges with cables on the bottom . Are there any cables near the Meadowbrook to avoid ? I know there's one half way over towards the Bay Houses because I lost rigs there . Do you set up during slack ?
 
I'm very surprised the Coast Guard allowed you to stay close to the bridge. They love writing tickets over there.

We're usually set up around the same distance as the furthest protective piling, and they don't give us grief. In this case we did end up a little closer (if you look at the alignment if the pilings in the pic we're almost even with and slightly ahead of the second set of pilings) because of the spare anchor and short rode not hooking up soon enough.

In fact, last week we were set up even with the outer piling and the CG was sporting around just generally playing with boats, burning the taxpayer's gas and chasing paddle boarders and we asked if we were okay where we were and got a thumbs up.

Back before they became DHS we used to actually hook to the pilings and nobody cared. Now they're a lot more uptight. I doubt terrorists are going to target a couple of drawbridges going out to the OP, but I'm sure it helps keep the public mindful of the need for funding.

Last year they had this nonsense going on at the Wantagh draw. If you watch carefully at the end, you'll see the trespasser leave.

 
I'm nervous about anchoring near bridges with cables on the bottom . Are there any cables near the Meadowbrook to avoid ? I know there's one half way over towards the Bay Houses because I lost rigs there . Do you set up during slack ?

There's always cr@p around the bridges to grab your gear. We really haven't had any issues with cable crossings anchoring on the West side of the Meadowbrook. There's still a chance of snagging some junk with your tackle, but it's pretty minimal.

The Wantagh, OTOH, is a lot more challenging. There's a cable crossing marked on the east side. And since they rebuilt the bridge we've pulled up garbage like structural steel and stainless cable pieces from the pilings on the anchor from both sides.

Several years ago we had a serious issue on the west side. Another boat in the situation was terminally snagged an ended up cutting their anchor off. We had a he!! of a time recovering ours. I think the construction crew lost a crane boom over there.

I have a picture of the anchor somewhere that I don't have access to right now, but when I get a chance I'll post it. After the fact it was pretty funny.

In the case in my original post we set up approximately an hour before the end of flood. The move was a little later, but the current is definitely running faster north of the draw.

We start out our set pretty far from the bridge to allow the anchor time to fall, establish scope, and hook up. My friend's Grady has a free-fall windlass, which helps a lot.
 

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