As I was driving out
to the island the Friday afternoon before I was supposed to meet Les, I
remember something my father said to me. “The secret to surfcasting,” he told
me when I was about 12 years old, “is that no one ever catches anything.”
While this
pronouncement may have been somewhat cynical advice to give to a young angler,
in many ways it was also accurate. On its face value, surfcasting is a most
unlikely exercise. A lone angler walks the beach with an oversized spinning rod
and from time to time, he stares out at the vastness of the ocean, looking for
some imperceptible sign that a fish, any fish might be swimming by, close
enough to land that it could conceivably be reached by the length of a cast.
These are long, long
odds indeed.
With that happy
thought in mind, I headed out to do a little surfcasting by myself, even before
I’d had the chance to stop by Les’ place.
I took the long route to my destination by driving to Bridgehampton
first, to peruse the selection of fishing lures at K-Mart. I found several Striper Delight plugs, which
are essentially a half priced rendition of the famous Striper Swiper popper
(any day you can buy an 8 dollar lure for 4 bucks is a great one, to my mind)
and headed back towards Southampton. I
arrived at the beach at North Sea at around 6PM. The tide was ebbing and the
water flat. A few terns were flying over one spot, about 200-300 yards from
where I’d parked so, I tied on a surface plug and began to cast.
For a half hour, I
contented myself with the knowledge that at any moment, a mighty 32-inch
striped bass might charge at my lure, slapping at it as I set the hook into its
jaw. I’d return as the conquering hero, the next evening’s dinner safely in my
hands to be grilled over an open fire.
Grunt! Grunt! The
Great Provider!
But my lure was left
unmolested, except for the few times a pair of passing gulls swooped down at
it. Nothing quite tastes like freshly roasted seagull. But I digress.
An hour passed. I had
gone from anticipating the great striper to wishing for a not-so-enormous
bluefish, to finding myself willing to settle for an anemic sea robin and still
my lure suffered not. The North Sea beach is lovely, but I’d been turning the
wisdom of my father’s words over and over in my head and I was feeling somewhat
like a jackass.
I left the beach and
at a little before 7:30PM, I arrived at the Shinnecock Canal. There were only a
couple other anglers there, casting from the western edge of the canal across
to the opposite side towards the Tide Runners restaurant. I love Tide Runners.
It features good seafood, cold beer, and a perfect view of other people
fishing. It also has a dock, and for no extra charge, you can watch as the
sometimes-intoxicated weekend boaters attempt to slip their boats in without
incident. I’ve seen some great crashes there, a couple good fistfights, while
witnessing some truly amazing fish being taken, only a few yards away. For my
money, it has to be the greatest show on earth.
I took out my newest
rig, a 7-foot Fenwick HMG rod fitted with a Shimano Spheros 4000 spinning reel
that I’d spun with 10-pound test line. I tied on one of the Striper Swipers
that I’d picked up in Bridgehampton and tossed it at Tide Runners.
My first strike was
at 8 o’clock. I watched as the fish came up through the water and took the
surface plug in its mouth before heading under. It turned out to be a small
striper, 20 inches long. I tossed it back, marked the spot where I’d hooked it
in my mind and cast again. The light was
still good, which gave me plenty of time to work the surface with the plug and
I figured I might have found a school of juvenile bass. They would be more than a hell of a lot of
fun to play with for the next forty-five minutes or so, until it became too
dark to see.
Five minutes later, I
had a tremendous strike. The fish quickly ran from north to south and I ran
along the edge of the canal after it as the fish leaped full out of the water.
It was a bluefish and
a pretty good sized one too. I noticed that the other couple of anglers who had
been casting had pulled their lines in and were watching the fight. I usually
perform quite badly in front of an audience and I half expected the fish to
choose this moment to spit the lure back at me, perhaps imbedding one of the
hooks in my leg, or some more embarrassing piece of my anatomy.
But it didn’t. To my
amazement, I began to gain on it. The fish continued to run and I had to keep
moving along the side of the canal to keep up. But very slowly, I felt the fish
tire. Most of the fight, it had been near the surface and I was able to monitor
its thrusts and runs by watching the tail and how it would suddenly seem to
vibrate just as a run would begin. This gave me a huge advantage. I was
actually able to anticipate the fish’s movements.
I brought my fish in
and measured it: 24 inches! Since I wasn’t really a fan of the oily taste that
distinguishes this species, I released it and continued casting.
I missed a couple
strikes, some small “cocktail” blues, which looked to be a perhaps a foot and a
half long. It appeared as though the larger bluefish had moved on. I noticed a
strange sight though and stopped casting.
Out in the middle of the canal, I saw what appeared to be a large number
of big fish, knifing through the water. Their movement was betrayed by the
V-shaped wake they left and they were working in unison towards some common
purpose. They were corralling the smaller bluefish.
The first explosion
of the feeding frenzy took place just off to my right, against the canal wall
about 100 feet from where I was standing. Before I could bring myself around to
cast though, the fish broke, heading diagonally across the canal, towards the
lock doors at the northern end of the canal. There, the smaller fish were
pinned in and they leaped end over end into the air as the bigger fish slammed
into them.
It was then that I
realized that the “cocktail” blues were being chased by some truly enormous
striped bass. I cast into the froth that the fish had made from all their
jumping and thrashing, but they were off again, down the length of the canal at
tremendous speed just as I began to retrieve. I chased after them, but whenever
I set myself up to cast, off they broke again. It was as exciting as either of
the two fights I’d enjoyed that evening. I stopped casting and just watched in
the waning light as the stripers raced after the escaping bluefish, trapped
them and then raced after them again once they broke free. I noticed that there
wasn’t another angler on the canal. It was as if they were giving me a private
show.
The next installment will be posted on January 27.
If you'd like to read the entire book today, GO
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