I haven’t tried to be ‘the guy’ that catches the first fresh-run striper in my local area for a long time; I feel like I’m doing more harm than good when I go out actively targeting schoolies. But I would rush to add that this is just a ‘me thing’ and I am not – in any way – trying to talk down to anyone that loves to ‘go hard’ for those first stripers of the spring run.
I do, however, still get an immediate jolt of excitement when I get those first reports of fresh, lice-covered, schoolies as they charge into my local waters. And, I will make a couple ‘lunch break’ runs to my local schoolie hotspot to try and put that first fish on the scoreboard for the new season.
I was out shooting my report video recently, standing on a salt marsh, listening to the ospreys calling and watching the cormorants dive for incoming alewives. The wind was howling hard west/southwest and it was hard not to wonder if that stiff breeze would be the one that carried in those first stripers of the season. My calls had turned up zeros for fresh stripers and I said on camera that the first stripers could arrive any day now and that I was certain that the fish would be here by the time I recorded my next report.
There’s a strange feeling of suspension that comes during this time of anticipation. I imagine it could be similar to how an astronaut feels in the final days before a launch. There are days and hours to wait, but at a point that’s close enough to touch, everything will change. I may feel calm and centered, I may look at things that need to be made ready and decide that there is still time. But I will also understand that this blank space of Zen that currently resides in my consciousness, will soon and instantaneously be replaced by a drive to fish that feels like a mix of mania, panic, obsession and euphoria. It will mark the beginning of a time when I feel more fatigued than at any other time over the next 12 months, but, strangely, I will also feel better than I have felt at any point in the last six.
Later that evening, after the video was edited and posted for proofing, I saw the first photographic evidence of stripers arriving in Rhode Island; some in Narragansett Bay, sporting those little rust-colored freeloaders that we call sea lice, another on a rock in Newport. I could guess where they were caught, especially the shore fish, I could likely find his footprints. But instead, I sat and breathed in what will be that last few days of calmness before the storm. I looked around my house and saw projects still underway, things I should finish before the torrent of striper season sweeps me away.
It’s really strange to stand on that riverbank, looking into cold water, knowing that there are no stripers in that water. But then being able to squint hard enough to see the future – one week, two weeks away – and know that the fish will be there. If this season is like so many others, there will be big fish, and I will, once again, find myself consumed by the urge to indulge my obsession, haunted by my ability to rationalize not doing things that really need to be done, so that I can fish more. I don’t love that about myself, but selfishly, I’m really glad I am the way that I am.
Maybe I should just apologize to my wife now, because in just a few short weeks, most likely as you’re reading this, everything will change.
And I can’t wait!
