That September nor’easter roared in and really kicked the striper migration into gear. One afternoon, I took a ride, hoping to find some bait that would direct my nighttime activities. After finding a mother lode of peanuts in a local estuary, I thought I had my spot figured out, but something urged me to keep looking. The open ocean was foggy, misty and angry. I pulled into the driveway of a friend’s aunt, and walked to the water. Before I could even see the whitewater, I knew there were fish. Birds hung low, battling the wind, wheeling and diving out of my view, below the steep shoreline.
As I walked to the edge of the road, I saw a rod poking above the ridge, working a pencil popper by the look. I walked closer and studied this caster’s stance; I knew I recognized him. Testing his instincts, I sat on the rocks and stared at him until the urge to look back traveled from his subconscious to thought and then to action. He turned and shot me an evil look…he didn’t recognize me. I stayed put, with mayhem in the water beyond him, he weighed the consequences of hooking up with another angler watching. He cast and hooked up immediately, he landed the fish and shot me another look of pure disgust. I waved and smiled and watched as recognition bloomed on his bearded face.
After some small talk, I ran back to gear up. The fishing was ridiculous, mullet were pinned into the rocks and huddling in tide pools everywhere I looked. Striped bass slithered through inches of water, their tails and backs fully exposed as they flushed out their prey. In all my years fishing the surf, I have never seen that many mullet. Cast after cast produced hookups with my bright green 5-inch NLBN paddletail. Soon my friend had had enough and headed for home and a change of clothes. I planned to stay another half hour, then head home for dinner and figured I’d head back after dark.
Right around the time I was ready to leave, another person appeared on the rocky beach. He was dressed like he might have been out sailing or at a casual cocktail party, a ‘Vineyard Vines’ kind of guy, probably drives a Volvo and has a labradoodle. He had a rod in one hand and a reusable shopping bag dangling in the other. He was wearing the absolute worst shoes for surfcasting, penny loafers. Those white rubbery soles with no traction pattern on the bottom; I figured I’d be stabilizing his broken leg or performing CPR within minutes! I couldn’t leave this guy alone on the blackened rocks of low tide.
I tried to not let him see that I was, but I watched him every slip-sliding step until he was within – what he deemed to be – an acceptable distance from the water. He made it safely and I made eye contact, just acknowledging that we were, I guess, living through this moment together. He made a cast, I couldn’t see what he was using, but he just stood there, like a statue, holding his rod. I caught two fish before he hauled back and began fighting a fish. There was a part of me that wished he didn’t hook up, because I thought maybe he’d leave. And I only wanted him to leave so I didn’t have to stay to make sure he didn’t get hurt.
He landed his fish, clearly a slot-sized bass, and I hooked up again. I lost sight of him while I was landing my fish. I started looking around for him, but he seemed to be gone. I looked closer and saw a small green tackle box in the rocks, I was sure he’d taken a fall and was floundering somewhere, hidden behind a boulder. I wasn’t yet in a panic, but it was coming. I started looking more frantically, when I saw his white hat appear from behind a rock. He looked at me and gave a silent nod that seemed to say, “I’m good”. I breathed a sigh of relief.
Seconds later, I saw him gathering his things, his shopping bag sagged with the weight of a keeper striper. Clearly, this guy lived in the neighborhood, saw the birds and said, “Hey Janice, I’m gonna go down and catch a striper for dinner.” One cast, one fish and back he went, his feet were barley wet. It was pretty cool to see a person utilizing the resource in a way that sportfishing has made unique: strictly for sustenance. And watching him climb the hill to head back to Janice, somehow made my day of epic fishing feel even more satisfying.
