EPISODE 22

Les and his brother Marty owned a little place in North Sea.  It was a 1920’s beach house, but the funny thing was that there was no beach there. Their front yard was a steep incline that emptied right into a calm stretch of the bay. There was a little boathouse and a spot where they could pull their aluminum dinghy out of the way of the incoming tide. Out in the bay though, lay their boat, an intrepid craft named Cruella.  Les was in very good humor that morning and he told me that had called a few friends, promising a fine fish luncheon at 2PM. When we set out in the dinghy, he informed me that it was my sacred duty, no – my entire reason for being, to help provide the mid-day meal.

Those of you who may not quite understand my reluctance to perform in front of others with a fishing rod, will now be treated to what we shall refer to as the Principle On CatchingFish In Full View of An Audience:

“The rate of an angler’s success is inversely related to the number of people taking note of what he is doing, divided by the number of currently visible fish.”

These are pretty crappy odds under normal circumstances. If you add to it the pressure of having to provide actual seafood for a given meal, it gets even worse. You have a better chance of being struck by a meteor on a balmy October evening while watching the Chicago Cubs win the World Series from the comfort of a hot tub located deep in the Hollywood Hills with Angelina Jolie cooing into your left ear.

The two of us set out that morning in Cruella to visit the world’s least cooperative seafood market, the Atlantic Ocean. We motored down to the mouth of North Sea Harbor and anchored off a point on the eastern shore. The tide was going out, creating a strong current. I made a few casts with my fly rod and realized quickly that if I was to have any chance for success, I was going to have to get my line down deep, all the way to the bottom.

I rigged a quarter ounce jig and a small plastic grub onto my leader, very much the same kind of thing I usually cast to smallmouth bass in the spring with my ultra light spinning rod. I swung the line out towards the harbor’s mouth and felt as the jig rapidly sank to the bottom. In only a few seconds, I could feel as the jig ticked along the floor, sweeping past the boat at a pretty fair clip.

Les was tossing a spoon lure with his spinning rod when I got the first strike. It was a sea scup, which Les derisively, although accurately, referred to as “bait”. Still, it was a start and we dropped the fish into the cooler on the deck, where it flopped about. Maybe 15 minutes later, I got another strike, but this was clearly a much larger fish. It ran with the current, towards the boat’s stern and then began to zigzag in the current. It took me a while to bring the fish in close and when I did, Les grabbed it, pulling the fish inside.  It was a two-foot long striped bass! This was great news. With a little luck, there might be a few keeper-sized fish (28 inches or better) mixed in the school. Lunch was looking like a possibility at least.

But Les had other ideas. He sat holding the striper, smiling kindly, as he reached under his seat and removed a white towel, which he gently wrapped the fish in. Then he thwacked the whole package against the side of the boat and stowed it in the cooler with the still thrashing scup.

“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled.

Les smiled at me. “Keep fishing, Mikey,” he replied. “We don’t have enough for lunch yet.”

I was appalled.  I started to protest, but Les interrupted me by pointing at the end of my line.

“Do you have more of these?” he asked with a smile, indicating the jig I had used to catch the utterly felonious fish that lay dead in the cooler.

I did and so I tossed a couple over to him. In a few more minutes, we were both bouncing our jigs through the current. It took a while, but after a half hour or so, I got another strike and again another doomed, undersized striped bass fled towards the stern of the boat, where Les pulled it in, wrapped it lovingly in a towel and then beat it to death before dispatching it with the rest of our illegal catch.

A pattern was developing.

I was now presented with the moral dilemma of enabling a pathological poacher while also really wanting nothing more than to continue fishing in what clearly were waters saturated with healthy (although prohibitively small) striped bass. I determined to rid myself of the thorny end of my predicament while preserving the fun of more good fishing.

I hooked into another fish in short order and steered it off to the starboard side of the boat before it had a chance to get too close to Les’s grasp in the stern. The fish fought well, which made Les particularly unhappy. I was delaying the delivery of the all-valuable main course for lunch and this was unforgivable. Meanwhile, I had contrived a strategy to deny him a third juvenile fish. The more I fought it off to the starboard side, the more tired the fish became and I was able to bring it in right at the bow.

Les reached out, positively beaming with delight at the bounty that lay in my hands. Lunch would be a feast to be remembered! But I managed to keep the fish away from him this time and as soon as I’d worked the jig free from the striper’s jaw, I placed it back in the water and watched as it sped away.

For several moments, I was reasonably sure that Les was carefully weighing the wisdom of placing mein the water as well. Being adults, we discussed the situation, using terse, somewhat profane language to exchange our opposing points of view. It quickly became apparent that my wish to release any other undersized fish we might catch struck him as bizarre, if not completely unreasonable behavior. Still, he recognized that we now had a couple of bass that were big enough to feed the crew he expected to come over that afternoon and when I reminded them that an unwelcome inspection by the harbormaster would most certainly result in massive fines for all involved, as well as the likely confiscation of his boat, he relented.

I can promise you though that luncheon that day was absolutely delicious. Forbidden fruit almost always is.

The next installment will be posted on February 3.

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