I’ve often said that, in New England, every week of the fall run, from the first of September to its final breaths around Thanksgiving, is like its own mini-season. I say this because as the weeks progress, I feel like you can often see… or at least perceive a difference as each seven-day block passes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at the tide chart, made my decision for that day or night and thought, “I wish these tides came one week earlier!” That’s the voice of experience talking and that selfish inner surfcaster that wishes everything was always scripted perfectly.
But sometimes things work out in a way you didn’t exactly expect or wouldn’t necessarily predict. Like a night last week, when we were still more than 10 days ahead of the new moon and with clear skies in the forecast, all other conditions seemed to warrant a trip. I knew where I wanted to go and I even knew what I thought I should throw. The only factors that I didn’t love were the brightness of the moon and the weak tide.
Upon arriving at my destination, the sky was much darker than expected, as a low shelf of thick clouds had deked the weatherman and left the shoreline shrouded in darkness. That put water conditions, darkness and weather in my favor and left only the weaker tide as the potential mark against me. I was starting to like to my chances.
In a perfect world, I’d have chosen to fish at a higher tide, but that wasn’t possible and I paid for it a bit when I had to choose a different rock to cast from because my needlefish was clunking along the bottom a little more than I would have liked. Cycling through the usual lineup of needles; Flat-Glide, Hab’s, Wadd… I had a few hard hits but none stuck. When the fish are letting me know they’re in the area, but not taking, I often try to think back to past experiences to look for a solution. I remembered a night at a very similar spot, with a very similar situation where downsizing to a 6-inch level-sink needle turned a curious-yet-cautious bite into a gong show of 20- to 30-pound bass. Sometimes it’s just that simple, find the right profile and hang on for dear life!
My first cast with the smaller needle resulted in an immediate hookup, not the 30-pounder I was dreaming about, but a solid slot-sized fish that gave me hope that something larger might be mixed into the surf in front of me. The next 20 casts brought more swings-and-misses, with a couple schoolies landed. The overall timidness of the bite had me thinking about trying to give them something different in the vibration department and my friend fishing nearby confirmed it before I could, by hooking up a few times in succession with a Super Strike bottle, something I doubt I would have thrown given the fairly gentle surf.
I flipped on my light and peered down into my bag, looking for the happy medium. I found it in the form of a loaded Red Fin. This was a Campo Red Fin gifted to me by a friend for helping him sell some vintage tackle. From the first cast, it proved to be the correct choice. Unfortunately, most of these fish were small, with just enough mid-30-inch fish to keep my interest. With just a single treble on the front and a ‘worm weight’ on the tail to maintain balance, many of the hits from smaller fish were nothing more that bumps, as they hit the tail and missed the hook. The bite slowed down after a while, and just when I was about to make the call to move, I got the hit was I looking for.
It was one of those hits that just stops you dead, I set the hook firmly and the fish didn’t move, I swear I could feel it turn, then with slow urgency it pulled straight out and away from me. I leaned back on the fish and with one head shake, she came off. But it didn’t feel like the hook pulled, it felt like something failed. As I reeled up the plug, I ran my fingers down the body of the rough-sided Red Fin and the belly hook hanger was gone! Flipping on my light, a broad crack gutted the red fin from the gills to maybe an inch short of the tail, it’s metallic load leaking out.
These are the moments when you feel exposed. Even though I could never have seen that coming, I just found myself wishing that I’d picked anything else in the bag, even though there’s no guarantee that fish would have taken it. Losing that one will haunt me for a while; that’s one fish I’d like to have seen…
Add it to the list!
