It's the day after the Fourth of the July, and the gloomy weather that dampened the holiday is still hanging over Island Beach State Park.
As evening arrives, so do the jetty fishermen -- they're after striped bass, or "stripers," which are more likely to come into shallow water in the dark.

Paul Haertel, a 52-year-old lieutenant with the Clifton Police Department, is parked on the beach in his pickup truck, which has license plates reading "ANGLER." He's waiting for Hofmann, whose own pickup has a camper on top of it, perfect for those long nights of fishing. Hofmann's license plates read "N JETTY."

Haertel figures he fishes at least 100 nights a year, and once hit 15 different jetties in one night.
He has been known to get off his shift in Clifton at 11 p.m., drive down the shore, and fish until daybreak.
Stripers weighing 40 pounds and over are considered trophies, Haertel says, and to catch one weighing 50 pounds or more is considered a "once-in-a-lifetime" event
. He did it in June of 2003, off the south jetty at Barnegat Inlet, and it's mounted in his house. Many fishermen catch and release stripers, and some, including Hofmann, tag them for state migration and growth studies.
But it's not so much about the fish.
Jetty fishing attracts a certain type of sportsman, one who values solitude and the opportunity to enjoy nature alone. That's another reason much of the fishing is done at night -- the advent of the Internet and cell phone technology has ruined the daytime fishing experience, Haertel says.
"It used to be you'd ride around and look for fish on the beach or jetty, and you found them, and you'd basically be there by yourself and maybe one other guy would happen along," he says. "Now, with cell phones, people call their friends, and then the tackle stores are notified, then it's on the Internet, and within half an hour, you've got 50 people around you."
Outsiders, says Haertel, corrupt the secretive vibe jetty fishermen try to maintain. Veterans of the rocks are so protective of their space and respectful of their peers that they, themselves, hesitate to bring other fishermen onto the jetty.
"We all want to do our own thing," Haertel says. "If I were to bring somebody, the other regulars wouldn't like it."

Hofmann wishes the less experienced fishermen better understood jetty etiquette. He sometimes wears a T-shirt with an eye chart on the back and wording that says, "If You Can Read This, You Are Fishing Too Close."

"It always happens on a full moon," he says. "Somebody's going to come walking out on that jetty with a Coleman lantern, with all the wrong fishing equipment, and blind me, and then expect me to be nice to him.
I can't do that, and he gets indignant because I won't talk to him, or I ask him to turn his light out.

"They can't appreciate where I'm coming from, and yet they think I'm the bad guy."
For as many gripes as fishermen like Hofmann and Haertel have, they tell twice as many stories about the wonder of their sport.
Once, near the end of a fishing tournament, Haertel was dead on his feet, standing so still an owl landed on the butt of his fishing rod and sat there.
Another time, he was using a live herring as bait and watching a striper chase it across the surface of the water when a seagull swooped down and grabbed the herring. Suddenly, he was fishing birds out of the sky.

Hofmann has been out on the jetty in the middle of the night when the full moon is so bright it casts a shadow. Shooting stars, invisible further inland, criss-cross the sky. In the fall, bioluminescent organisms in the water cast an eerie but beautiful glow.
"I love the outdoors, and getting away from people," Hofmann says. "Some people think we're crazy, other people respect it.
This is my Mecca." Hofmann wishes the less experienced fishermen better understood jetty etiquette. He sometimes wears a T-shirt with an eye chart on the back and wording that says, "If You Can Read This, You Are Fishing Too Close."

"It always happens on a full moon," he says. "Somebody's going to come walking out on that jetty with a Coleman lantern, with all the wrong fishing equipment, and blind me, and then expect me to be nice to him.
I can't do that, and he gets indignant because I won't talk to him, or I ask him to turn his light out.

"They can't appreciate where I'm coming from, and yet they think I'm the bad guy."
For as many gripes as fishermen like Hofmann and Haertel have, they tell twice as many stories about the wonder of their sport.
Once, near the end of a fishing tournament, Haertel was dead on his feet, standing so still an owl landed on the butt of his fishing rod and sat there.
Another time, he was using a live herring as bait and watching a striper chase it across the surface of the water when a seagull swooped down and grabbed the herring. Suddenly, he was fishing birds out of the sky.