{"id":2662,"date":"2014-06-25T20:20:05","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T03:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/?p=2662"},"modified":"2019-06-25T18:47:16","modified_gmt":"2019-06-26T01:47:16","slug":"season-opener-2014-stripers-at-white-sands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/?p=2662","title":{"rendered":"Season Opener 2014: Stripers at White Sands"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A fish tip from The Tackle Shop puts\u00a0Tenacious Billy Black into the bass\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n
\"HarveyTackleShop\"<\/a>

Reel Therapy: Capt. Bennett at a calm moment<\/p><\/div>\n

June 25, 2014:<\/strong> Captain Harvey Bennett was pulling his shoulder-length Graham Nash-esque hair out of his graying head when I walked into The Tackle Shop in Amagansett<\/a> to pay my respects on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Summer was barely underway, but the Captain was\u00a0already poised to burst into flames. The pressure of 35 years guiding, retailing, and dealing with dilettante googins\u00a0like me clearly\u00a0was taking a toll. Nonetheless, the combustible\u00a0Captain shared a fish-finding tip in a conspiratorial whisper: “White Sands\u2026first light\u2026bass just beyond the bar…they’re gone at sunrise.” As most of you know, there wasn’t much I could do with this news. Unlike the rest of the world, whose official striped bass season begins every year on April 15, my surfcasting doesn’t get going\u00a0until the day after Labor Day.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"BillyTackleShop2013\"<\/a>

Fish Tips: Billy Black at The Tackle Shop<\/p><\/div>\n

Enter Tenacious Bucktailin’ Billy “Black”, 2010\u00a0Surfcasting Rookie of the Year<\/a>, who hasn’t lived\u00a0a spring, summer or fall day\u00a0when he won’t chase fish. Harvey assured me Billy had “the word”. But apparently the fish didn’t. Billy was at the designated Napeague ocean beach Monday morning as instructed. But he might as well have been casting into a desert. No fish. A definite problem,\u00a0but not insurmountable in Billy’s world. \u00a0Living up to his other moniker of Tenacious Billy, he\u00a0hung around\u00a0in paradise for another 24 hours. On Tuesday, the scene played out\u00a0as originally scripted. At first light, nigh of 6 am, heaving\u00a0a blue Super Strike popping\u00a0plug over the breakers\u00a0into a gentle\u00a0incoming tide, Billy had the beach all to himself. With a school of fish breaking water beyond the bar, a teen-size,\u00a029.5 inch striper took Billy’s lure\u00a0right\u00a0in the wash,\u00a0his first keeper bass of 2014. Just as Harvey predicted, Billy was lit by\u00a0a\u00a0soft eastern glow;\u00a0the sun not\u00a0yet risen above\u00a0the horizon. He also\u00a0landed a 26 inch throw-back striper on a darter and dropped another fish\u00a0of indeterminate size on a bucktail plug. Not a bad way to get things going in June. As for me, 68\u00a0more days ’til Christmas, uh…I mean…surfcasting season.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This teen size bass was the first from the surf this year for Tenacious Billy Black<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fish tip from The Tackle Shop puts\u00a0Tenacious Billy Black into the bass\u00a0 June 25, 2014: Captain Harvey Bennett was pulling his shoulder-length Graham Nash-esque hair out of his graying head when I walked into The Tackle Shop in Amagansett to pay my respects on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Summer was barely underway, but the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2662"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3466,"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2662\/revisions\/3466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fishtales.abatemarco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}