As I sit down to write this, it’s the last day before the Fourth of July long weekend and I’m finding myself reminiscing about great fishing experiences that happened to coincide with this holiday throughout my life. And it’s funny, the one that stands out the most, really wasn’t about catching fish or even the fishing itself. Sure, there are a handful of great catches that happened, too. I remember at least one massive Canal blitz; I remember staying home one particularly rough and nasty 3rd of July and getting the news from my fishing partner that he had landed his personal best, while I slept. And at the time, that 42-pounder would have been my personal best, as well. It stung, but I was happy for him and was left to wonder what might have transpired if I had decided to brave the weather like he did.
But the memory I wanted to write about here was a commando trip to Cuttyhunk with my longtime friend and former fishing partner, Dave Daluz. This was my first trip to the storied island that is steeped in striper lore, and anticipation was so high I couldn’t see the top of it. Dave had made his first Cutty trip the previous September and experienced what was probably the best surfcasting of his entire life. A seemingly endless supply of 20- to 40-pound stripers that were taking pencil poppers, both in the dark and in the light and regardless of the tide. Riding over on The Seahorse I certainly wasn’t expecting that kind of success, but even if it was 25% of that, it would still be amazing. Sadly, our success on that trip couldn’t be measured in whole numbers, but at least we didn’t skunk!
When we stepped foot on the island, draped in gear, we immediately began the long haul to the southwest corner of the island, to the area known as The Pyramids. Pointing out over the water, Dave said something like, “This is where they were, every cast I made, for four days, I at least got a hit.” Pointing to a shallow a rock, he described how he used that rock to stay upright in the raucous surf, standing in front of the rock, sitting down on it when a wave pushed him back and standing right back up to keep fishing. Try as we might, the fish just weren’t cooperating at all. As darkness fell, I found myself rounding the western tip of the island, standing beneath the Radar Tower.
Looking back over my shoulder, the island seemed like perfect wilderness, blackness – flat and featureless, a chorus of insects and the wind whistling in the brush were the only sounds. Looking back toward the mainland, the rest of the world seemed alive and joyous. The lights of homes added a warmth and reassurance that weren’t really that far from home. The sky seemed bigger than I could ever remember seeing it, a perfect gradient from the purple of last light on the western horizon to deep midnight blue to the east.
The thing I remember most vividly were the fireworks. From one end of visible land to the other, amateur displays appeared as bursts of shimmering confetti tossed from the ribbon of black earth that separated the flat ocean from the towering sky. And then, huge bursts began to erupt from behind the horizon, dwarfing the homespun displays along the shoreline. Later research would reveal that these professional fireworks originated in Fall River, Massachusetts, lit from a barge in Mount Hope Bay, nearly 25 miles away.
These moments that make us realize how small we are, can really stick with us and, in that moment, I felt invisible. But in a really amazing way. For some reason, it felt as if all this visible activity onshore allowed me to extrapolate those small fragments of evidence of human existence and apply them to every faceless person I could assume was out there, somewhere. Like the permission to let loose, to celebrate and to relax without a thought about work or trouble, afforded by the highest of summer holidays could be felt from across the bay. And even the fact that I was there with my best friend, doing what we loved, felt like we were partaking in the celebration, too…invisible and casting into a nearly fish-less sea on the shadowy shorelines of Cuttyhunk Island.
