Yom Kippur is a Bust
SEPTEMBER 27, 28, 2009
What a disappointment. Fished early Sunday AM and then late afternoon; Tried again early Monday AM. Nada. Wiped out by rain and wind; No fish. Went to East Hampton giant clam contest instead. Left early Monday to get ready to see Tosca at the Met.
On a soaking September weekend, these clams were lined up for judging in the East Hampton Giant Clam Competition.
Gimme dat Ole Time Religion
SATURDAY, SEPT. 18, 2009
At times, surf fishing approaches a religious experience for me. No more so than on Rosh Hoshanah. Not because I have “seen the light”. Rather, because I have probably caught more fish in the surf on the Rosh Hoshanah holiday than any other day of the year.
Given, Rosh Hoshanah is the day I fish most consistently since it always falls during the prime shank of the autumn surfcasting season. Then again, I have to believe there is something else going on. You be the judge.
Sunrise on Napeague beach on Rosh Hoshana morning brought the first surfcasting blitz of 2009
This year, Rosh Hoshanah was early—September 18-19–and my season—which typically kicks off on Labor Day weekend—was late. But the two converged very nicely on a sunny and warm weekend tailor-made for bathing suit and barefoot sandy beach surfcasting. And like years past, it produced a bumper crop of bluefish and striped bass for the table. I call that old time religion.
For weeks, There was virtually no action in the surf. While I was up Island, keeping the world safe for real estate short sales, My brother Frank, his son Christopher and brother-in-law Keith–in from California for my son Daniel’s wedding the weekend before (thus the late season start)–were keeping things honest from Amagansett to Montauk. All week they searched the beaches, along with their guest Bob Crais, an escaped novelist from the Southland (http://www.robertcrais.com/). Bob had visited a few years earlier and caught beaucoup bluefish on the Montauk beaches in a driving November nor’easter. This time he had perfect Indian Summer weather but the skunk was upon him. Frank showed him how to live like a bayman with
First cast, first fish of 2009. A cocktail bluefish from the Rosh Hoshana Blitz
successful clamming and blue claw crabbing expeditions. Bob even turned a single whelk taken from the Northwest Harbor clamming grounds into the sweetest, most tender Scungilli salad I ever tasted. But alas, no Rosh Hoshanah magic with finned species for Bob on this trip.
By the time I arrived for a Friday session, there was a stiff WNW wind on the beach and the surf was dirtied up and choppy. We hunted all the usual locations, but the only productive use of my time was getting my beach permits up to date. Natalie caught the bullet train from NYC and joined us for a dinner of store bought (but locally caught) Mako shark steaks prepared Cajun style on Frank’s grill.
With sundown, the Rosh Hoshanah holiday was officially upon us and it was as if the fish knew. Because on Saturday morning, everything changed.
The minute we drove on the beach at Napeague Lane at sunrise, we could see clouds of birds to the east. If I had a shofar, I would have blown it. Bob Crais and I sped toward the action. Just west of White Sands motel, we found fish splashing within casting range. On my first heave, I nailed a cocktail bluefish on a white pencil popper. Bob hooked
Keith Criado nails a keeper bass at White Sands in Rosh Hoshana Blitz '09
up shortly thereafter but dropped his fish at the waterline. Frank and Keith were in the water by now and Keith had a bent pole but trouble cranking his reel. It turned out his main problem was a 28-inch striper that inhaled his silver Kastmaster. Keith brought in the first keeper of the season on the last day of his fishing trip. Another High Holy Days miracle. He added a bluefish for punctuation and our cooler was filled for the lunchtime feast to come.
Though the birds kept circling and diving on bait for the rest of the morning The fish moved off to deeper water. Our action lasted less than an hour beginning at 7am on the last of the incoming tide. With the lull, we repaired to Frank’s house and a fish cleaning party where we discovered the bass was feeding on tiny baby crabs and clams while the bluefish was gorging on tiny weakfish.
Lunch was grilled fresh striped bass, Long Island BLT’s (bluefish, lettuce and tomato sandwiches), served on bagels with a grand salad by my niece Gina.
After Bob and his wife Pat left to catch their plane, we returned to the beach but never raised another fish. For dinner, we cobbled together a ragu comprised of Natalie’s red sauce laden with striped bass morsels, bluefish filets, a handful of Frank’s clams and a bag of large shrimp. We tossed this seafood melange over linguine and supplemented with another spectacular Gina salad.
SUNDAY, SEPT. 20, 2009
Dawning gloriously, Sunday morning brought the same spectacular weather but different players. Big Bob Wilsusen joined the fishing party as did nephew Chris in place of Keith who was packing for his return home to Santa Barbara. Frank and Chris took off for the scene of Saturday’s crime while I waited for Bob who was slightly delayed when he fought off and killed Bambi who attacked his Land Rover Defender on Springs Fireplace Road. Unfortunately, Bob did not keep the meat.
We met up with Frank and Chris at White Sands where the sun’s first golden rays were diffused in a mist rising from the shoreline. The 55-degree air temperature was about 10 or 15 degrees cooler than the ocean, which was flat as
Father and son, Frank and Chris, ganged up on gangster blues, Rosh Hoshana 2009
glass. The birds were active but the fish were absent. We searched east and west until 8am, when the fish began splashing up in earnest. We chased a school west to Napeague State Park and everyone got well. Chris and Bob competed for biggest-fish honors with two long, fat gangster blues. No bass, but the four of us caught well over a dozen fish. We took home 10, which were all earmarked for our table and those of friends on both coasts. Another BLT fish grill for lunch and the weekend was suddenly over. Frank and family returned to California the next day, but they will be back for another surf fishing session in October.
Next up? September 28 will bring the lesser known, but up-and-coming and nearly satisfying Yom Kippur Blitz. God is good.
Thanksgiving Weekend Finale
Nov. 29-30, 2008: I’m finished. Packed up the fishing rods, reels and lures. Swept the sand from the truck, aired up the tires and tied a Christmas wreath to the grill where the cooler rack and rod holder used to be. I will fish no more this year. On this final weekend of November, the traditional end of my Labor Day to Thanksgiving surfcasting season, my attention turned to turkey vegetable soup on the stovetop and the football Giants and Jets on the tube.
Gannets dive bombing at frigid Hither Hills as the 2009 surfcasting season winds down to an end
A few miles offshore from Montauk Point, plunge-diving gannets are feeding on migrating herring bait that have attracted the season’s last keeper bass. Sea-going anglers, willing to brave the elements until the season legally closes in mid-December, are getting well. From the surf, however, it is a different story. Nary a cow has been caught since Election Day. At Paulie’s Tackle Shop in Montauk, the surfcasting tournament leader board has hardly changed since October. The Fat Lady has been clearing her throat since Veteran’s Day weekend and she is now ready for her close up.
This is not mere hearsay—the vicarious ramblings of an armchair angler regurgitating moribund Internet posts (though I must add, it has been weeks since Noreast.com had a Montauk fish report of any consequence). No, I bring you an eyewitness denouement. I have been on the beach every weekend this month and more than a few weekdays (in case you hadn’t noticed, the real estate business is r-e-a-l slow). I haven’t caught, or seen or heard of a fish caught from the surf in two and a half weeks. The few bass I did get since Election Day have all been the kind of stay-behind schoolies—some call them Christmas bass—that typify the season’s finale. Trust me. We’re done.
Autumn’s End
Cathy Callahan and Joe the Plumber of Montauk fished for micro bass and cocktail blues in the placid beach waters of Amagansett
I was pretty much willing to surrender to the frigid cold snap that swept into the area on November 17, the anniversary, by the way, of my daughter Diane’s first keeper bass in 2001 (see “Four Fish Diane and Her First Striper”, November, 2001). But I did my best to keep the east end beaches honest with a Monday through Wednesday Amagansett getaway while my wife Natalie was off gallivanting in Pierre SD and Dallas TX on behalf of Citigroup as the U.S. economy slid precariously close to financial oblivion.
The colors of Autumn were there one day.....
....and with a gust of wind, gone the next day
What a difference a week made, weather- and fish-wise (alas, not so much for the economy). On Wednesday, 11/13, I fished congenially with about a dozen Montauk sharpies on the sandy Amagansett beaches catching cocktail blues and micro-stripers.
It would be the last productive and colorful day of the year. Splendid red and yellow maple and oak leaves blazed in the late autumn sun which warmed the harvest roses of my sister-in-law Toni (St. Toni of the Blitz). All these became memories, however, when a weekend wind and rainstorm ushered in wintry temperatures in the low 20s. The week before Thanksgiving, Amagansett streets were choking on piles of brown leaves and rutting deer more visible than ever in the naked bramble.
One new adornment on the scene which I hadn’t expected was Jeff O’Brien’s patriotic addition to Treasure Island Drive: a 12 foot flagpole at the top of the street waving Old Glory in the breeze. I immediately saw its potential for flying a “stripers-on-the-beach” signal pennant and other vital messages: beach party, cocktails, etc.
However, I learned that not all my neighbors shared my enthusiasm for this new edifice. I expect it will put a little bit of starch back into the Treasure Island Drive Association annual meeting come next May.
The Late Awakening of John Papa
By the time my wife returned from the heartland, we decided to brave the cold holed at the beach while Citibank negotiated its government bailout and kept Natalie’s Blackberry lit up the weekend long. I had no fantasies of serious fishing considering the weather and lack of a single optimistic report. But along came John Papa, who was determined to not let the season end without at least one fall foray.
Northwest winds blew cold over the ocean beach at Napeague in late November
John deserves respect for his determination and the fact that he caught the first fish from the surf this year—even BEFORE the unofficial Labor Day “season opener”. On a warm and sunny Friday afternoon in mid August, as the usual Manhasset-at-the-beach crew relaxed on sand chairs, John Papa methodically threw cast after cast– “equipment testing” I call it at that time of year—at the ocean’s edge. There were a few fly-by birds near in, and a flock of gulls dancing on the water out deep. The water was clean and brisk with a gentle swell and a tight curl at the shoreline. Not a sign of fish. Suddenly, John’s pole bent. He checked his tip and then his reel. He thought he had a snag. But the rod tip quivered otherwise. He cranked in a few times and again checked for an equipment malfunction. By then I was on my feet, knowing he was on a fish. A few cranks more and John saw the 20-inch striper in the curl of the last wave. He beached it and no one was more surprised than John. A crowd gathered. Applause broke out. Photos were snapped. Beachers brought their children. With this catch-and-release, John took an early lead in the race for 2008 Surf Rookie of the Year. And then he disappeared.
John’s September was dedicated to setting up his daughter Katie for freshman year at the University of Cincinnati where she is a voice music student. His October was dominated by a wedding anniversary trip to Amalfi with Laura, his beautiful bride of 25 years. Finally, ready to fish on November 22, one of his Montauk buddies quipped: “John: Don’t you think you missed the season by about a month or two?”
I found more deer in the brush than fish on the beach on November's last weekend
Unfortunately, he sure did. Nonetheless, early Saturday morning, I found John on my doorstep in Amagansett, ready to bundle up in all the fleece and Neoprene a man could possibly wear and still breathe. We dialed the truck’s heater to blast furnace setting and made the usual rounds of Montauk and Amagansett beaches while Natalie began her holiday baking.
With not a sign of life in the usual haunts, John and I ventured west to the beach behind the Maidstone Country Club. There we spied a small flock of gannets and gulls picking away with more than casual interest at something in the wash just beyond the sandbar that was starting to show at low tide. We cast for a while but the birds disappeared and all we produced was numb fingers. We packed it in for chicken cutlet sandwiches and beers at Karen and Bob Wilsusen’s house on Kings Point Road where Bob was dutifully wrapping a winter tarp around his dry-docked boat, the Reel Attitude. Later, Laura Papa joined us and it was dinner for six at the 1770 House in East Hampton. All thoughts and conversation turned to Thanksgiving and the holidays ahead. In the background, the Fat Lady sang softly.
Epilogue: December Bass?
It is not like a post-Thanksgiving surge never happened before. Two years ago, I was at on Cupsoque Beach in Westhampton, grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat as I caught keeper after keeper on a mild and mellow 5th of December afternoon.
She'd been warming up since Veteran's Day, and by Thanksgiving the Fat Lady was in full voice
At least one experienced Montauk guide is betting long odds that there could be one last hurrah before the official end of striped bass season in New York State on December 15. Bill Wetzel thinks that a stretch of warmer weather and a south wind for a couple of days or three could push the herring close to shore—and the migrating cow bass will surely follow. But with water temperatures now plunging to the mid 40 degrees, Bill’s vision would be a Christmas miracle, indeed. And I, for one, ain’t holding my breath. See you on the beach next September. –Fred
In Search of Moby Striper
NOVEMBER 11, 2008
I’ve got the mid-November, can’t-find-no-keepers, where-are-the-big-fish, tell-me-it-ain’t-over, tired-of-eating-pizza, surfcasting blues.
But it is not like I am not used to it.
Late fall lulls like this one have been fairly common in recent seasons. After a good September, and sometimes a better October, the fish seem to disappear. No one has a really good explanation why or where they go. Offshore? Down deep? South? West? Still here but not feeding? Some years, skin-diving spear fisherman give us hope when they find stripers “stacked up like cordwood”, just hanging around the bottom. We may not have been catching them, but it was always good to know they hadn’t left for the winter. Lacking such reports this year, however, we are all without a clue. This post-election day week, virtually every surfcaster in Montauk–local sharpie to Smithtown Ranger alike–was shaking their head, wondering where the quarry went.
Big Brother Frank had a rousing start to the surfcasting season in September and now he was back hoping for a repeat before the November closing curtain comes down
The month didn’t start this way. Hankering for the Halloween blitz, my brother Frank arrived from California on October 29 for his final foray of the season. Frank had a good visit in September with bluefish and keeper bass. This time, he was on a mission for Moby Striper on the big bait, and a chance to return home with care packages of fresh caught bluefish fillets for the family and friends who stayed behind.
Mecca provided an early touch of winter our first morning out. There was snow in New Jersey and upstate New York, and it was 39 degrees at Montauk Point with northwest winds blowing up to 20 mph. Plenty of sunshine all day warmed things up to 50 degrees. Frank and I fished the incoming tide from about 10am, working all the usual spots. We tracked a school of fish with birds working over them to the Stepping Stones and when they didn’t come in close, we rode the paved route to Gin Beach and Shagwong were we lunched on eggplant sandwiches and snoozed the afternoon away waiting for a massive school of bass to come within reach. They never did. The truck was back in the barn by dinnertime at dusk. We ate bluefish ragu over linguine, giving small thanks for the remains of the prior week’s success.
October 31 The Halloween Blitz
More record low temperatures: 26 degrees in Islip and Riverhead. The forecast was for 60’s and sunshine, but the winds still honked from the NNW at 15 to 20 mph. The plan was to fish the morning and then do an abbreviated afternoon session before poker at Jay’s house.
Rookie Surfcaster and punk rock attorney Justin Hoy nailed gorilla bluefish at the North Bar
We toured the usual haunts on the outgoing tide but no fish were close enough to the beach to even attempt any casts. In the afternoon, Frank’s punk-rock attorney Justin Hoy joined us for a return trip to the Point. That’s when the fishing got interesting. Pods of blitzing stripers dotted the water from the Lighthouse all the way around the north side to Oyster Pond Cove. We watched as one frenzied feeding school slowly made its way into casting range near False Point. Anglers were converging tightly at the spot where the fish became reachable. By the time Frank was suited up and ready to go, there was no longer room to cast. So I moved us over to the North Bar promontory. Frank protested, looking over his shoulder at the fish he feared we had left behind. “They are coming,” I promised. He hesitated. “Fish here,” I commanded. With a skeptical eye to his right, my brother finally waded into the surf. And as he did, the water erupted in front of us. By the time Justin and I took our positions, fish were racing past our boots and the water was alive with bait and predators. Frank hooked and landed a gangster bluefish. I caught and released a short striper. After a while, Justin had his first fish, a hard fighting yellow-eyed monster. Between 3pm and 4pm we caught 9 fish, including a pair for the rookie surfcasting barrister. Thanks to our position, cast for cast, we had more hook ups than any of the two-dozen anglers who followed us to the North Bar. That night, Justin complemented his success in the surf with a stunning victory at Jay’s poker table. While we all chomped pastrami and turkey sandwiches, Justin picked out pockets clean and made it look easy.
Justin Hoy, Frank and I pulled "gangster blues" from a blitz at the North Bar
The Halloween blitz of schoolie bass and gangster bluefish extended into a sustained bite through the All Saint’s/All Soul’s weekend. On Saturday, Justin skipped town with our money and Doug Levian took his place in the truck. We found nothing in the morning and I was counting on the afternoon pattern to repeat. It did, but in a different location. After tracking fish from the North Bar into Oyster Cove Pond that simply never moved close enough, we drove into a hit-and-run blitz of bass and blues on Gin Beach and Shagwong Point. We put two blues in the cooler, threw back some small bass and busted home for dinner by 7pm. Didn’t want to be late for Uncle Tono’s signature fall dish of boullibasse made from a stock of fresh caught bluefish and supplemented with scallops, calamari, shrimp and bluefish fillets.
Keep Watching the Oceans
On Sunday, I violated two of my cardinal rules of surfcasting (#2: Always return to the scene of the crime; #10: Never leave them biting.). I took the morning off to enjoy a relaxed fall weekend with my wife Natalie, her parents and Tono. We walked, talked, and prepared a lunch of Long Island BLT’s (bluefish, lettuce and tomato). Frank called in his report in the late afternoon: the fish had moved to the sandy ocean beaches where he and Doug killed them in the town of Montauk.
Doug Levian (left) and big brother Frank work the beach at Shagwong Point
After the weekend, the ocean beach fishing got even hotter, culminating on Election Day with stripers and bluefish in the wash from the Coconuts Beach, all the way west to Napeague. Keeper bass and 10-pound plus choppers chased snappers and bunker bait right to the shoreline. Harvey Bennett reported picking a 25-pound bass out of the wash near Koosmeyer’s on Truck Beach. Frank, Doug and the suddenly hooked-on-surfcasting punk-rock attorney Justin Hoy were in on the action and quit when they were tired of fighting big blues. But by the time Obama won the White House, the fun was over—at least for surfcasters. A textbook nor’easter blew into the area and shut down the bite faster than summer folk turning off their outdoor showers after Labor Day.
When Frank and I did the walk from the Sewer Pipe to Caswell’s Point on Wednesday morning, we saw one small bluefish caught under the Stonehouse. We lunched at Pizza and Pastabilities, in Montauk, a first time event for either of us. What this place calls pizza, is quite short on possibilities. The crust was passable: thin, well done and not too yeasty. But the sauce was an abomination, polluted, I am sure, with powdered garlic salt.
Skunked in the Sunshine and Shadows
Returning to the beach in the afternoon, we sipped Sol y Sombre (equal parts Anisette and Fundador Spanish brandy) on the North Bar with Pepe the Spaniard. But we didn’t sniff a fish. Beef chili from my freezer for dinner that night.
In the rocks in front of the Montauk Point refreshment stand bluff, we fished at first light on Thursday and Friday through fierce wind and pelting rain. All for the ignominy of tossing back a half dozen 20-inch stripers in diapers. Meanwhile we slipped and slid in the pounding waves and sweeping current, donating our fair share of buck tails and other lures that snagged on rocks and weeds more times than we hooked into fish. On Friday, we lunched on yet another bad pizza, this one from Felice’s Astro Pizza in Amagansett. A definite improvement on the sauce, but the crust was spongy, undercooked and flavorless.
Blues Brothers: These tasty cocktail blues went a long way at our dinner table in lieu of the elusive keeper stripers
Friday night dinner was pot luck at Jay’s house and Frank baked the last of his All Soul’s Day bluefish catch. Saturday, joined by Big Bob Wilsusen, his son John Magovern and Doug’s son Vinny Levian, we squinted through pea soup fog but didn’t see a single bent rod from dawn to 8am when we surrendered to breakfast at Anthony’s Pancake house. By noon, Frank and I were in the car dodging broken-field-running deer on the road as we traveled west to JFK airport for his return home to Montecito. Frank was packing a bag of frozen fillets and we found time for one more pizza before his departure. This one at King Umberto’s on Hempstead Turnpike near Belmont race track. A winner all around.
Tick Tock; The Season Winds Down
By the time Frank’s flight took off, I was oblivious to pizza. Instead, I pondered the $64,000 question: would we have a post Veteran’s Day season? Would the herring bait show, and big bruiser bass along with it? Or, will the fall run simply pass us by, far offshore? Some migrating Brants have been pecking around the water’s edge and a few gannets have been diving around Shagwong, the North bar and even along the ocean beach. Good signs. But we haven’t yet seen the massed flocks of south-heading birds that typically signal a serious bait run. I left Doug and Vinny at my house with firm instructions to call if any action heated up in my absence. Doug was usually a good luck charm around the time of his Marine Corps’ anniversary. But Thanksgiving was looming. Tick Tock. The season was winding down. And no one wanted to hear the fat lady clearing her pipes. Not just yet. Not while there was still color on the trees and roasted corn at the farm stands. It would be an early and unhappy winter if the season ended on such a down note.
Sultans in the Surf
OCTOBER 24 & 25, 2008
Prologue
And a crowd off young boys they’re fooling around in the corner. Drunk and dressed in their best brown baggies and their platform soles.
They don’t give a damn about any trumpet playing band. It ain’t what they call Rock And Roll!
—Dire Straits, Sultans of Swing
Never again.
I will never, ever again invite my childhood and high school buddies from Brooklyn—The Red Hill Gang, also known as the Capos Club of New York (CCNY)—surfcasting in Montauk. I did it in 2007, and we were skunked. I did it this year (2008), and it was a fishing weekend to end all fishing weekends.
So, what’s wrong with success? First, we simply cannot repeat perfection. What we experienced simply doesn’t happen all the time. Or, most of the time. Not even some of the time.
Second, I won’t invite them back because I won’t have to. After this weekend, they will show up on their own. Hell, if I’d have sex with them, they would probably propose.
CCNY–The Red Hill Capos Club of New York (l to r) Felix “Bag of Lures” Fanti, “Bubba” Bobby Avitabile, Freddie “the fish” Abatemarco, Dr. Charlie Boyz “Catfish” Catalano, Tony “Bootsie” Dolce; Missing in Action: Vinny “the Taxman” DeNave
But they certainly shouldn’t ever return. Can you imagine winning $50K at the tables on your virgin trip to Vegas? Such luck is once in a lifetime. You’d be smart to hop a plane out and never look back. This was my advice to the Capos as they departed Sunday morning: Take your doggie bags of fresh-caught fish, your memories of keeper stripers and gorilla bluefish slashing and thrashing at your feet on some of the world’s most beautiful beaches, the sidesplitting laughs, great meals, perfect fall weather, nostalgic story telling, and relish these. Because idyllic weekends like this don’t exist in the real world. They are the stuff of books and movies and our imaginations. Right?
It was surprise enough that the reunion finally happened. No one in this group of 60-something geezers is retired so we are all torn between professions, family—four grandfathers in the bunch—and geography. The crew is spread over Florida, California, Virginia, New Jersey, Staten Island and, of course, Long Island. We all favor warm weather so a quorum typically comes together once a year, at most, in Las Vegas, Miami or Puerto Rico for a bit of golf, gambling, and what most people call charter fishing. But, as I have tried to educate my friends for years, what they think is fishing is really yachting. Fishing is what we do in Mecca—Montauk Long Island, the surfcasting capital of the world.
This year, a happy conflux of a business trip for Felix and a family wedding for Dr. “Charlie Boyz” in New York aided my long standing entreaty that we meet at my beach house in Amagansett, Long Island for an October surf fishing extravaganza. Vinny The Taxman was off not playing golf in Myrtle Beach, still skeptical after his no fish weekend in October, 2007. But Bobby was back for his second try, a faithful if still fishless believer. And Tony figured there were worse things he could do with his weekend. So we had a full complement of five out of six, enough to fill the truck and round out the card table.
“Fish On” inside the North Bar for Catfish Catalano who took Surfcasting Rookie of the Year honors for 2008
This plan was not without its risks. I was setting myself up for severe ball-busting should the Capos get skunked with no fish as happened with Vinny and Bobby in 2007. What was I thinking, begging this merciless group to join me for sport fishing that has a success rate lower than 50 percent? Double those odds considering that none have any experience with the gear, terrain or techniques that are virtually unique to Montauk. True, we are all long-time, close and loving friends. But despite their adult respectability, these streetwise veterans of a hangout we called “The Red Hill” in Gravesend, Brooklyn, are true to their roots: they give no quarter, track their wounded and eat their young. The pain potential for me if I produced a skunkathon was very high indeed.
My advance strategy was to prepare—and pray. My recently acquired PBV (Permanent Beach Vehicle), a 10-year-old Toyota 4Runner, was off-road tested and performing admirably. My rods and reels were serviced at Captain Harvey Bennett’s Tackle Shop. I had a full complement of foul weather gear at the ready. I arrived in Amagansett on Thursday afternoon to scout the fishing grounds, stock the liquor cabinet and cook. If well fed and plied with adult beverages, they might partially forgive me if we didn’t catch fish.
Unfortunately, the south side sandy ocean beaches–where I hoped the action might be–were quiet, despite encouraging reports of bluefish and schoolie stripers in the surf to the west in Shinnecock, Robert Moses, Fire Island and Long beach. I spent most of the late afternoon on Gin Beach—a north-side spot ideal for my boys if the fish came close and ran along the shore—dazzling at a small school of bluefish that stayed mostly out of reach. A couple of score of surfcasters salivated for these few fish like dogs awaiting their master’s release in a bird field. Pickings seemed slim indeed. However, at Montauk Point, there was a prescient sign: a couple of good-sized schools of bass formed up off the Lighthouse jetty and the North Bar. These are probably the most difficult beaches to fish because of the slippery rocks, the lure-eating boulders and the tendency for the fish to come close only where the fearless dare to wade. It is also considered private territory of the local “sharpies” who disdain novice anglers such as the “googans” I was hosting. Still, if it turned out to be our only shot, we’d have to make the best of it. With the right wind—but not too much of it–we might come up sevens.
Friday, October 24
Fish were here, fish are gone, fish will come again.
Montauk is The End.
Amen.
—a Surfcaster’s Prayer
Pre-dawn temperatures hit a record low of 31 degrees at Islip airport. It was 27 degrees in Riverhead as the sun rose. Still, the forecast called for sunny skies and air temperature in the 60s with calm winds. Nearly perfect conditions for the day ahead. However, a snotty wind and rainstorm creeping up from the southwest would arrive by late Saturday afternoon. There wouldn’t be too many chances at whatever fish we were lucky enough to find and reach.
I muttered solemnities to myself returning from a scouting run to Montauk Point at first light. Stripers in small but dense pods were blitzing the waters just beyond Scott’s Hole near the Lighthouse. I could only hope these fish would find their way to a beach within our reach when the Capos arrived in a few hours. By 12 noon, all hands were present and the boys were anxious to get started. We’d have an incoming tide and sunny skies all afternoon. All I needed was some fish! I went straight to Montauk and showed the boys the view of Block Island Sound from the Money Pond Trail overlook. Here, I explained our quest:
“Ideally, we want to find birds that are circling, hovering or diving low to the water,” I said. To which Tony Dolce answered: “Like those?”
“Yes,” I responded. “But they really need to be close in to the shore.”
“Oh,” said Tony pointing to Clark’s Cove, “you mean like those birds.”
Patiently, I instructed him further: “But to know there are fish under them, we need to see splashing in the water.”
And sure enough, that is what we saw. Tony had spotted a bona fide, close in, bird-diving, fishtail-splashing bass blitz within easy reach of the shoreline right below our vantage point. Best of all, it was just developing and no one else was onto it!
Tony’s keeper was among the many fish the Red Hill Capos scored in two days of “stupid good” surf fishing in Montauk
Felix said he never saw me move so fast, and he was right. As quickly as I could hustle their butts back in the truck, I whipped the Capos down to the beach in the 4Runner. Determined to get something in the cooler, I grabbed my rod and left my buddies behind. Charlie Boyz said that I went deaf to his pleas of “what about us?” He too was correct. Most of the rods and reels weren’t even rigged yet. I was figuring on casting lessons and some general instruction while we waited for fish that I wasn’t even sure would come. Forget that. It was heave and haul time and in moments I was fast into a striper. My second fish was a keeper and by this time, Charlie had picked up a rod and was casting on his own. It was ugly, but effective. On his second try, he hooked up and landed a keeper bass of 28 inches. Soon I had all rods ready to go and Bobby, Tony and Felix joined the fray. Bobby nailed a short bass. To this day I still don’t know how Felix missed. As for Tony, he kept donating lures to the sea. “Defective equipment,” he protested. Indeed, by the time he was done with the gear, there were defects aplenty. The close in bass moved off after about 30 minutes. Some bluefish moved in and then the action died by about 2pm.
We repaired to a diner in Montauk for lunch. I was still shaking my head in disbelief that we scored fish on our first foray. The guys didn’t know enough to be amazed. They worked their cell phones and Blackberries getting in the last of the week’s communications with the office. I was wondering what we could do for an encore.
Gangster bluefish like this one for Felix came home and graced our dinner table along with keeper stripers
Shortly past 3pm, we returned to “our spot” and watched a very slow pick of bass on the extreme promontory of North Bar. That was not a helpful sign for my guys, but then came the perfect tell: Cathy Callahan, a local who out fishes 90 percent of the Montauk sharpies, whizzed past us on the beach heading west toward Oyster Pond Cove. I watched through the field glasses as her truck disappeared around the point near the Stepping Stones. Joe the Plumber soon followed her; This was our Joe the Plumber, a Montauk sharpie famous in these circles for his shorty white boots, scruffy beard and scratchy cigarette voice. That was enough evidence for me—circumstantial, as it was—that a fish call was out and there was close-in action at the bowl near Oyster Pond.
It is a dicey beach route to the bowl and I’ve never done it with a full truck. I calculated that the boys would appreciate the extreme off-road adventure of this run. At worst, I would have four companions to help dig out if we hit any quicksand. A punctured oil pan, however, wouldn’t be so easy to deal with. But the fish weren’t coming to us.
We arrived at the Stepping Stones and there was clearly no need to chase Cathy or Joe any further. The fish were right in front of us and the boys started casting again. I was able to spread them out enough so that when the armada of sharpies who were surely on our tail arrived, my guys wouldn’t have any nasty encounters. The only lures they would tangle would be their own. I stood back, admired my protégés, and barked instructions like an E6 on the firing range. “Keep that tip up; take the slack out of that line; crank, crank, crank.” For all the good it did.
Dr. Charles simply ignored me and Tony didn’t even bother to listen with his good ear. Bobby and Felix were starting to get the hang of it. The good Doctor and I nailed two more bluefish and we had a few more short bass. Felix and Tony were still fishless when we got the high sign from Lenny the Fish that the tide was rising and it was time to boogie back to safety. I was happy enough to leave with four fish in the cooler, and five believers in the truck. Myself being the most astonished of all.
Dinner was a mixed grill of marinated striper and bluefish with sautéed broccoli rabe washed down with a velvety Valpolicella provided by Bobby. The poker decks came out around 9pm and Felix swallowed up most of our money by midnight. Though fishless, he wasn’t complaining.
Saturday, October 25
Always return to the scene of the crime
—Fred’s Cardinal Rules of Surfcasting #2
At Anthony’s insistence, we pulled out at first light, even though it was odds on that the fish would show up again in the same place on same tide—which means about one hour later—the next day. You can fairly depend on fish to repeat their pattern from one tide to the next–until they don’t. A change in weather, beach structure or bait movement will cause a change. I have seen patterns of fish or no fish last for days or sometimes weeks.
Nonetheless, we were on the bluff above Montauk town beach as the sun peaked above the horizon only to sneak behind some low and leaden clouds. After due homage to the ocean at the Surfside overlook, we cruised the Lighthouse, surveyed the North Bar and cast for a while at Clark’s Cove. I had a PBR as a breakfast beer. We made a coffee and donuts run into town and paid a visit to Paulie’s tackle shop to kill more time. The boys met Jack Yee, local paparazzo of the Montauk surf fishing scene. Felix spent his card table winnings buying up fishing lures to replace those he and Tony kept heaving into the ocean. Back to the fishing grounds where I attempted to fill the time with colorful tales of the locals and their silly names—Gary the Toad, Florida Bob, George of the Jungle, the Mad Hatter, My Cousin Vinny, etc.
My crew was starting to get antsy. After the prior day’s action, they were itching for fish. I tried to explain that what they had yesterday was a rare and wonderful thing. They would have no excuses. Like Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo they wanted…”more”.
To keep their focus, I went out on a limb and predicted, “today will make yesterday look like a bad fishing day.” They would need patience, however. I’m not sure how convincing I sounded. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself. Many a day my patience was paid off with chicken for dinner.
But based on Friday’s results, a dropping barometer and a storm chasing us up from the southwest, my hunch had a chance. In a few hours we would know. I just had to make sure I had the audience—and all the equipment still working and the lures not all lost at sea–if and when the fish finally appeared.
More time to kill. I suggested a lunch break. Options: return to Amagansett for beef chili and eggplant sandwiches on my deck, pick up heroes from the local deli, or split a couple of pies at Village Pizza in Montauk. Pizza was the consensus. We sat down at 1pm and were back in the truck at 155p. I looked at my phone and saw that I missed a fish call from Jack Yee at 145pm. The game was afoot.
All day action at the North Bar produced these keeper for surfcasting rookie Dr. Charlie Boyz and MVP Bobbie “Bubba” Avitabile.
By the time we returned to the North Bar, the action had already come and gone. We saw fish being walked off the beach. We took up our usual position near Clark’s Cove and watched a slow pick of fish continue off the promontory. Now my crew was in full regalia: Anthony was shod in my green rubber “Wellies”, Bobby and Felix were the Neoprene twins, and Dr. Charlie Boyz suited up in my waders with cleated Korkers taped to the soles. With men this well dressed, we had to catch fish. The problem was where to find them.
We’d loose the weather soon and I didn’t think this crowd was up to fishing through a blow. So Into the truck we piled and gingerly made our way again toward Oyster Pond Cove. As we reached the Stepping Stones I could see some birds working at the edge of the cove. Truth is most were kicked up by a beachcomber on foot. But I could also see the water was stirring with fish. A monster blitz was forming up. To my astonishment, no one was there. We beat everyone to the fish: the sharpies with their radios and cell phones, the mosquito fleet of flyboats. For a few fleeting minutes, the Capos had acres of fish all to themselves!
I parked the vehicle before we hit the narrow gully wash, which I refused to cross with five men aboard. We traversed the next quarter mile to the fish by foot. I had everyone grab as many rods and lures as we could carry—a surfcasting take on “leave the gun, take the cannolis”. Felix and Bobby were first in the water and hooked up virtually immediately. Stripers were inhaling baitfish at our feet and I had to shout my instructions over the racket of their tales slapping in the wash. A rare and wondrous scene mesmerized the guys. Anglers can go a whole season—maybe many—without witnessing such a blitz. I know I have.
Fresh caught keeper bass and gorilla bluefish graced our dinner table as the Red Hill capos celebrated two successful days of surfcasting in Montauk
For the next two hours, I released fish, tied on lures, and wet a line myself. Using my lightest spinning tackle. I nailed a leaping bluefish with one flick of a wrist cast. My feet were soaked, my hands were cut, my shirttails were bloody and I was having the time of my life. Putting these guys into fish was about the only thing better than catching them myself.
Soon, the convoy of sharpies moved past us and on into the cove. We kept our position and the bite continued. We continued throwing popping plugs and started to nail gorilla bluefish. The bass still lurked in to rocks but it was too risky to the gear to fish them up with bucktails. Tony, using the soft Storm Shad lures, landed three stripers. Felix had two or three throwbacks and a 30-inch bluefish that may have weighed in double figures. The good Doctor took home one more keeper bass and threw back many more. Bobby caught the fish of the weekend—a chubby bass, bloated with whole bunker bait—that measured up at 31 inches and weighed somewhere in the low teens. This pool fish earned him the weekend MVP award.
At 430pm, we walked our fish back to the truck and left them biting. It was time to clean up, drink up and eat up. On the dinner menu was striped bass mare chiaro surrounded by a couple of dozen little neck clams in a fresh marinara sauce served over linguine. As the wind howled and the rain swirled outside, we lit a fire, drank Pino Grigio, and Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, sipped espresso with Natalie’s homemade pumpkin pie, and then the cards reappeared.
Dr. Charlie Boyz took what little money I had left and then left me with all the quarters. But I fixed him real good. As revenge, I packed up a bag of cleaned and trimmed bluefish and striper fillets, and two eggplant parmigiana sandwiches for his drive back home to Virginia with his wife Marci. That will teach him not to catch a keeper bass on his first ever surfcasting trip to Montauk and win 2008 Surf Fishing Rookie of the Year without a struggle.
At least not until the second annual Capos Go Surfcasting Weekend in 2009.
With a contract extension on my usual “up until Thanksgiving” fall fishing season, Christmas came early for me and other stalwart surfcasters.
December 20, 2006: I have a contract with Natalie (the “BW” as in Beautiful Wife). Even though the official New York striped bass season is April 15 to Dec. 15, my pact with her stipulates I won’t even think about surf fishing until Labor Day — and I will quit by Thanksgiving. In return, she promises not to hassle me the entire fall season — no matter how many hours, days, or nights I spend on the beach. Most years, we both come real close to keeping our bargain, and I hang up my rods and reels by the time we sit down to turkey and cranberry sauce. But this fall, Montauk bass fishing in the surf was a mysteriously disappointing “rat-fest” of tiny stripers, some hardly bigger than the lures we were tossing. The fall run either hadn’t started or wasn’t going to happen.
Then came a fish call on the last day of November from Jack Yee, resident chronicler and paparazzo of the Montauk surfcasting scene. By all reports, Nov. 30 was a classic, sunup-to-sundown, rip-roaring, bird-diving, fish-jumping, water-churning blitz of big stripers and bluefish practically everywhere along the south shore of eastern Long Island from Montauk to Moriches.
In Montauk, teen-size bass, and plenty of 20-pounders, were mixed in with schoolies and gorilla blues. A convoy of vehicles with about 100 anglers chased them in the sand from Dead Man’s Cove to Amagansett. One 51-inch, 40-pound bass was taken at Hither Hills before first light.
Of course, I was sitting in my office instead of on the beach for a day that will prove to be legendary. But on Dec. 1, the BW had a “working-at-home” day filled with e-mail correspondence and teleconferences, so it wasn’t hard for me to get a fishing pass to get in on this late-season blitz. Heck, I don’t think I had to ask, “Please, Natalie?” more than a dozen times. Piece of cake.
At dawn, the wind was already up in double figures and the south-facing beaches were churned foamy with whitewater. A southwester was forecast to hit full on by late afternoon. Temperatures were expected to plummet to something more seasonal once the blow moved through. Tick tock. Above the roar of the pounding surf, I could hear the Fat Lady clearing her throat in the background.
At first light, I headed east to the scene of the prior day’s action, hoping for a repeat performance. But it was not to be. Fishermen I met said, “Oh. You weren’t here yesterday?” Then they walked away with pity in their eyes.
The beaches north and south of the Montauk Lighthouse, the area surfcasters like to call Mecca, were virtually deserted except for one local sharpie. For an hour, I was into fish, but they were all rats: none bigger than 20 inches. Though I hated to violate the cardinal rule that says “Never leave fish to find fish,” I was not about to waste my December pass on stripers in diapers.
I needed to find a gang fight, a melee, a slugfest of fish. So I headed west looking for one.
Near Indian Wells Beach, I found what I was searching for. Gulls and gannets were patrolling the outer bar and now and then darted inside to the wash. When the birds came in close, I attacked.
The wind had picked up some and the tide was steadily advancing. I stayed with the east-flying birds, stopping to cast now and then without any success. A few other trucks had joined the chase now. By the time we got to Napeague State Park, a few fish were landed: some decent-sized bluefish and, disappointingly, a few ratty, undersized stripers. I bolted ahead of the pack and the birds, hoping I’d find a cut in the sandbar where the fish might sneak within range.
I found my spot and began hurling my lure as far as I could, wondering if my health insurance covered rotator cuff surgery in the off-season. The water was up to my thighs with waves swelling and breaking at chest level as the current swept hard from right to left. But the water was clean, not yet churned with sand or grass, and amazingly warm for December.
And then I got the hit.
It came in the frothy trough between the outer and inner sandbars, not more than 20 yards away. If there were an audio track, the sound would have been like the snap of a whip: “Crack!”
No little nibble on the rod tip the way a striper can sometimes investigate your lure; no waiting breathlessly for the fish to swallow the line before leaning back to set the hook. No sir. This was an all-in assault on my lure that jerked my pole down almost parallel to the water and 45 degrees to my left. The hook was set at the bite and the contest was on.
I recovered from my surprise with a sharp upper-body thrust to get my rod tip vertical and create an angle that would relieve the stress on the fishing line. I guessed I was onto a gorilla bluefish, but my reel’s drag was set tight and the fish protested with a splash that told me how wrong I was. The characteristic broad fantail of a bass arched out of the water and slapped down on the white foam in a bodily statement of protest.
The fish made a sharp turn for the deep water, but I gave it absolutely no room to run. In response, the fish fought convulsively to free itself. When it raised its head to shake the hook, I had little doubt that I was onto a keeper of substantial weight. The idea was not to give the fish any leverage on the inner bar with the slightest slack in the line. I didn’t want to lose this striper, my first ever in December.
I kept my rod tip high, began to walk backward to the beach, and I picked up line as I went. I didn’t approach the fish until I had it halfway out of the water and then rushed to haul it up on the sand by the gill plate. This striper measured out at slightly more than 37 inches and weighed a hefty 18 pounds. It had inhaled my lure and the hook was set firmly in its lower jaw. In its belly were three — three! — swallowed-whole, eight-inch herring. What a glutton.
My first-ever December bass seemed a perfect season ender, wouldn’t you say? Not quite.
On into the following week, the weather remained unusually benign. Late afternoon on Dec. 5, I found myself atop a sand dune in Westhampton Beach contemplating a couple of acres of gannets and gulls diving over the sandbar just beyond casting range.
I’ve been surfcasting for 30-some-odd years and, except for a couple of field trips to Cape Cod and the Outer Banks in North Carolina, I have confined my fishing to the East End beaches between Mecca and Wainscott. In the past, I’ve never had a need to venture elsewhere. But with my December fishing pass, and the big bait rapidly moving west along the south shore, I remained in hot pursuit of stripers when I should have been Christmas shopping.
My first cast was with the crippled herring lure still hanging on my line since the action in Napeague on Friday. Bang! The hit felt like I hooked a bag of cement; it was stealthy and without any fanfare. Moving the fish quickly through the gentle breakers, I beached a 33-inch, 15-pound bass.
If nothing else, my day was complete with a keeper for the dinner table. But the top action was too spectacular to ignore so I switched to a Yo Zuri pencil popper. Sure enough, as soon as I slowed down the lure, I nailed another bass, all splashy and showy. Another keeper. Back to the sea it went. And then another, caught and released.
Every fisherman on the beach got well that afternoon. I had five stripers in the brief but intense blitz that lasted barely 30 minutes. I saw a couple of 20-plus bass landed. At one point, looking left and right, I saw more than 20 sticks all bent simultaneously with keeper bass. And virtually every surfcaster wore the same smirk, born of the thought: “I can’t believe we are into this kind of fishing in December!”
As quickly as they came, the fish moved down the beach to the east and offshore again. I stuck around and cast for another 20 minutes and nailed a couple of almost-legal schoolies, calling it a day to a most dramatic sunset sinking into the ocean simultaneously with a full hunter’s moon rising above Great South Bay.
Thus the curtain officially descended. It was a December to remember in which Christmas came early for me and many other stalwart surfcasters. Question is: would I ever get that contract extension again. Stay tuned.
Season Epilogue: Diane’s First Striped Bass was a Quality Keeper
NOVEMBER 17, 2001
Diane’s first striper was a keeper and she parlayed this catch with a gorilla bluefish the same size: 34 inches (Photo by Jack Yee)
November 17, 2001, dawned clear and cold. A frigid wind blew steady from the north-northeast; Just enough to rile up the surf and get the fish moving. A deep black, star-laden night dissolved into a bright and sunny late autumn morning. By 6:30am, my 13-year-old daughter Diane and I were in the truck, heading out for the year’s surfcasting season finale.
Montauk Point, usually the venue of choice for trophy fish that time of year, had been stubbornly unproductive for the past two weeks. Up until the first week in November, both the north side and south side beaches around the lighthouse had yielded a steady bonanza of blues and stripers—albeit small ones. Indeed, when my friend Ron LeDonni made his once-a-year surf fishing trip to Montauk around Election Day, he was rewarded with all the cocktail blues his rock weary legs could handle on an unseasonably pleasant day.
The Beginning of the End
Yet a week later, when my brother Frank showed up from California for his turn in the surf, you’d have thought the fish lost their map to Montauk Point. We hunted all the likely spots for three days straight and the most action we witnessed was the dive-bombing antics of the newly arrived gannets who joined the mainstay gulls in feeding frenzies far off shore. The only good news in that aerial display was the likelihood that menhaden bunker or herring bait was the object of the gannets’ kamikaze tactics. And the presence of big bait promised that big bass were still around. There was still hope.
Indeed, truly committed surfcasters always have a hard time giving up hope—or the season. And when the weather is balmly into the heart of November, the faithful continue to ply the beaches right into the holiday season. I can recall fishing the Indian Head beach amid snow flurries in mid November with Big Brother Frank and punk rock attorney Justin Hoy, and wading to a sandbar on Napeague to catch gorilla bluefish with Jay Press the weekend after Thanksgiving. This fall fishing season had all the makings of a late one. But to put no greater risk on my marriage than I already had with a five day East End fishing vacation the week prior, I agreed to call it a season on this very unseasonable Saturday.
Friday night’s e-mail fishing report from Jack Yee, the East End’s unofficial paparazzo of sand and surf, was the last bit of convincing Diane and I needed to turn our vehicle west from Amagansett to the beaches of East Hampton and Georgica. Frank and I, after spurning the dead waters of Montauk, had finally gotten healthy there on Tuesday and Wednesday with small blues and stripers. As expected, Diane and I found birds working over bait with the first golden slants of sunlight. No fish were showing at first, but surfcasters were everywhere with anticipation. By 7:30am a succession of tight lines and bent rods was bringing up a mix of small bluefish and short stripers. It seemed a certainty that Diane and I would have some good morning sport and an evening seafood dinner. But the banner day that was ahead for Diane was beyond our expectations.
“Four Fish” Diane
Perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised. Diane had quite a season in the surf that year. Though she was by no means a little girl, some folks were still surprised to learn that Diane had been reeling in blues from the surf since she was 10. Why anyone was skeptical that Diane had the passion as well as the strength to wield a nine-foot surf stick and do battle with predator fish was a mystery. She may have been the youngest female on the beaches in those days, but she certainly wasn’t the only one. And she was far from the least experienced. Diane had been accompanying me surfcasting since she was an infant. In 1998, she fished solo for the first time and landed three blues during a fast moving Labor Day blitz on the town beach of Montauk. More recently, Diane out-fished me and my companions by landing four blues on a warm summer morning. It was on that day that Diane earned the handle of “Four Fish” Diane.
Diane’s favorite style of fishing is the Indian Summer variety–splashing around in gentle surf with bare feet, a bathing suit and tee shirt. Late in the season, she’d just as soon stay warm in her bed than venture out to the beach. But her early season success must have kept her hungry for action—even though she knew our November adventure that morning would ask more of her than ever. She donned Neoprene waders, a fleece-lined windbreaker and shivered as we got set for our first casts. I fished a white 2-ounce bucktail lure with a white pork rind, enhanced with a yellow and black feather teaser tied 12 inches in front. Diane stayed with the 2-ounce “shorty” Hopkins metal lure that served her so well back in September. Diane doesn’t cast very far, but she is accurate enough that I have no fear of crossed lines when fishing by her side. And with the fish starting to hit in the breakers not 50 yards away, Diane was positioned to be into the mix along with everyone else.
The action started with three-pound bluefish. I was getting a hit on nearly every cast. And as I slowed my retrieval, I gained the interest of small stripers. A few paces to my right, I could see Diane wearing a doubtful scowl as she reeled through the suds uneventfully. I thought to switch Diane’s tackle to a bucktail like mine. But I knew she had little experience with that lure and I was also afraid that the tackle might be too large for the size of fish we were raising. I looked to my left and spied quite a commotion of birds very close to the shore about a half mile back to the east. “Let’s move”, I shouted to Diane above the rising wind.
Bent Rods Everywhere
We doubled back to the spot where we had entered the beach. Immediately to the east of East Hampton’s Main Beach parking lot, there were bent rods everywhere. Within a few casts, I had a double header of bluefish on my line. A tiny fish had grabbed my bucktail, but a much larger fish had snagged the feathered teaser. I figured this would be the highlight of the morning when Diane’s line went tight.
Her rod bent in a serious arc. My heart leapt as I thought with glee that this was Diane’s chance to land her first striper. She needed little coaching. She steadily pulled back on the fish and took up the slack line as she gained ground. Her drag was set fairly loose and as Diane tugged the fish through the white water, it fought back determinedly. Now I felt a jolt of excitement, daring to think that Diane might have a quality fish—a 28-inch or larger “keeper”, at least. With the running fight she was getting—not the characteristic bluefish tug she was familiar with–Diane was perplexed. But her confusion gave way to an eventual recognition that there was something quite different going on at the end of her line.
It took her nearly 10 minutes to win this battle. After the fish gave one final tail flap at the foot of the surf, Diane dragged it clear of the surf line. There lied a noble but defeated 34-inch striped bass. Diane had her first striper, and a keeper at that. I laughed and shouted congratulations. She beamed. When I held up the fish for her to see its size, her eyes grew wide in near disbelief. But was she proud and happy.
After some more small blues and bass which we returned to the sea, we leap-frogged back to the west as the birds signaled that the fish had done another about face. In a little while, I had a 32-inch striper in the cooler. And moments after I landed that linesider, Diane was again pulling back on another fish–hard. This one seemed to be getting the best of her. I was fully expecting a repeat performance of her inaugural striper from an hour ago. At this point, I wasn’t about to put it past Diane landing a 20 pound slob of a fish—the kind of bass many anglers only dream about. She seemed to have a magic touch.
The fish seemed to be winning; It was peeling line from Diane in short bursts. Diane would gain ground, and then lose line. “Daddy, my arms hurt,” she cried. I stopped fishing to urge her on with loving words of encouragement: “Kiss my surfcasting butt, Diane! Bring that fish home, girl.” She didn’t give up. I was thoroughly enjoying the sight of my little baby dueling with a sea monster in the early sunlight. A fisherman to her left watched with awe and respect. Finally, the fish showed itself with a desperate but futile leap near shore. This was a bluefish. A monster bluefish. A gangster bluefish. It had a fat white belly and a head the size of a small dog. It measured out at 34 inches to the split in its tail—longer than Diane’s leg.
Diane caught a few more small blues and so did I. But we both knew the day was complete. The morning’s accomplishments–Diane’s first striper, and first keeper at that—would provide plenty of fare for our table—and lore for the winter ahead.
