FishTales

I finally managed to be in the right place at the right time

October 13, 2010

Striper Vigil: Sunrise at Turtle Cove and the wait begins

It was a waiting game. And it took an entire morning; nearly the whole tide. But skunked was not an option on my birthday. For two days, I fished east and west along the boulder strewn ocean beaches of Montauk Point with little to show for my efforts.  The fish abounded. But they were tough to second guess on location, and they were finicky feeders when found.

This day, however, I refused to be denied.  With hardly a stitch of food in the larder for an impending visit from the Brooklyn Red Hill Capos (see these links for Capos Go Surfcasting editions 2008 and 2009), I went all in at Turtle Cove at daybreak. A stiff and chilly north wind kicked up whitecaps off the Lighthouse jetty. But the sun rose strong and there was every reason to believe the fish would show up as they had each day for two solid weeks.  The only problem is where and when? Unusually, we didn’t have a predictable pattern of time, tide or location.  I logged my beach time. But other than Sunday, when John P. got his first ever keeper bass from the surf at King’s, I was in the wrong spot every time one of these tight balls of striped bass blitzed up. Turtle Cove, where the fish showed up the evening before, seemed as good a starting point as any.

By nine AM, virtually every other surfcaster using similar logic gave up and departed.  Instead of quitting, however, I moved west into the rocks at Brown’s. From there, with less glare off the water, I had a better viewpoint to watch the early signs of working birds and small feeding pods of fish entertaining the mosquito fleet  more than 500 yards off shore.

Birthday Bass: This 17-pound striper fell to a feathered teaser among the rocks

At 11am, the fish came in. It was the last hour of the rising tide. Just as the wind sat down, a very small pod boiled ever so briefly, and I was quick to a rock to cast to them.  I had on a Krocodile metal lure in case I needed distance, and a white feather teaser to mimic the tiny anchovies these fish were feeding on.  It took a few casts before I had the fish in front of me and even then, I pulled through them without a strike.  Suddenly, my rod quivered and then it bent hard. The line peeled and the drag whined as the bass struggled for freedom. I knew immediately I had a keeper. The question was: how big and could I steer it though the rocks without my line failing? In short order, other surfcasters appeared as if from thin air and I implored two of them not to cast across my line.  By the time my striper was in, the school was gone.  But they reemerged shortly, this time thicker, in a showy, white-water churning blitz. Still, there were very few hook ups among the scores of anglers now casting shoulder to shoulder.  A fly-roder landed a 26-inch fish and I scored another short schoolie, again on my teaser.

Even though the fish came and went for another 30-minutes, ever so slowly moving through the cove, I decided to call it a morning and humped my fish back to the parking lot. The morning tide topped out and the bass then disappeared.  My fish measured out at 34-inches and about 17 pounds.  If I had candles I would have decorated it.

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