And Now, the Elusive Conclusion

Oh, werd?
At 4am, Eric, Kevin, my dad, and myself piled into Eric's car and headed for the Point.
At 4:07am, we realized we had forgotten the bait.
At 4:14 am, Eric, Kevin, my dad, and myself resumed heading for the Point. We were the first fisherpeople to drop lines. The sun began to crack the horizon. My dad cast into the surf and hauled in multiple sharks. As the sun slowly rose, other fishermen joined us along the coast. I chucked lures repeatedly to no avail. No one was catching anything other than sharks.
Kevin chose this moment of slow fishing to attempt to remove a snarl from his reel. He chose his favorite lure, the $10 needlefish, to (theoretically) cast out his line as far as it would go. With a mighty wind up, a mighty fling of his surf pole, and a mighty SNAP!, Kevin's line broke off and his $10 needlefish took a mighty leap into the Atlantic Ocean.
Covered in clam juice and sand, we returned to my parents' house. Dejectedly, we washed off our poles and put away our lures. On the way home from a final shore lunch, the rain became more steady. My dad told us about *one more* spot where stripers can be found in Cape May: ___ ___. We agreed to stop there briefly to watch the fishing action.
The rain came down in needles. Fishermen and women wearing long rubber pants waded into the rough surf to cast hi-los beyond the waves. Sea gulls were blown nearly sideways by the driving wind. And people were catching fish. I looked at my dad, and it was clear he agreed: one more try.
At high tide, Eric, my dad, and myself walked in the driving rain to an open piece of beach. We drove sand spikes and baited hooks. None of us had rubber pants, so we took off our shoes and socks, rolled up our jeans, and waded into the freezing water armed with surf poles. After we threw our weighted lines, we left the line running out while dashing back up the beach to our sand spikes. Then, we waited. Our feet froze in the surf. Eric's hand began to bleed from holding his broken pole. No one wanted to give in.
Suddenly, my dad's pole bent clean in half. He raced to the pole to set the hook and began to reel in the fish. With a whoop, I grabbed our bucket. After a brief battle, the striper was landed. A striper! It did not make the minimum size for a keeper, but it was a beautiful fish.
Shortly afterwards, my dad's pole bent again. This time I raced to the pole to haul in the fish. Although this striper was slightly smaller, it still took all of my arm strength to wrestle it to shore.
Bloody, frozen, but triumphant, we called it a day. The stripers we had caught were shorts, but they were the fish we had come to catch (well, once we had found out there were no winter flounders anyhoo...). These stripers will be at the Jersey Shore again in the fall season, after a summer of eating and growing. I'm sure we'll be there too.
...And Kevin's $10 needlefish still prowls the open ocean off of Cape May to this day.