The Fourth of July has always been one of my two favorite holidays, Thanksgiving is the only other can match it. Of course, my love for this special day used to stem from the fact that it was accepted and almost expected that you would be blowing something up at some point. I was a bit of a pyromaniac when I was a kid and that tendency has only waned slightly in my adult years. What can I say? Fireworks are fun!
One of my favorite Fourth of July memories though, didn’t happen on exactly the fourth, and I didn’t light a single fuse; it was the weekend nearest to the fourth back in 2006 or 2007, I think. My fishing partner at that time was my friend Dave Daluz and we fished harder than most during those days. We made a plan to make a commando run to Cuttyhunk on that Saturday night. The week leading up to the trip was exciting with lots of daydreaming and conversation about packing the perfect plug bag. Then on Saturday, with the sun dipping low into those summer evening clouds, we were crossing Buzzards Bay on the Seahorse with John Paul at the helm.
Back in those days, it seems I was completely carefree, we barely brought anything! A couple Gatorades and a few granola bars; everything else was fishing related. The plan was to get off that last ferry, fish all night and then get on the first ferry back and go home to sleep. During that evening crossing, the bay was flat as a lake and the world surrounding that spot where we seemed to be floating in suspended history, glowed with the oranges and purples of a disappearing sun. The mystery of the night ahead was all the fuel we needed to push through the dark hours.
Daluz had an amazing trip to Cutty a few years prior and landed on the mother lode of stripers averaging 20 to 40 pounds and had them all to himself. We planned to hoof it directly to the scene of that melee and branch out from there. We arrived with a low glow still visible in the west. The calm seas translated to a pretty placid rip in front of us and the fishing was very slow. Night fell and high slack followed, we had a few small fish. I kept working west and then north until I was looking northwest, back at the mainland.
There was a visible difference in the energies of these two land masses; Cuttyhunk was resting with even breaths, the mainland was ablaze with visible celebration, fireworks erupted like solar flares on the surface of the sun, reaching skyward and boiling like arms and elbows in a raging mosh pit. Then bursting from a deeper layer of the distant darkness, massive, majestic shells exploded higher above the horizon. They were the professional fireworks being launched from a barge in Mount Hope Bay nearly 25 miles away. I had involuntarily stopped fishing, standing on a rock, just watching all this unfold across the bay. The hysteria lasted about an hour and then slowly faded to nothing as the night progressed. The mainland fell dark and then slept.
Sadly, the fish seemed to be pretty sleepy on this night as well. Our biggest two fish of the night came around midnight and were presumably from the same school as Dave hooked up about 30 seconds before I did and about 150 feet further up-current. Both fish were around 18 pounds, not exactly the Cuttyhunk monsters we were envisioning. Needless to say, we were dragging pretty hard by the time the sun came up and driving home in full daylight at 10 a.m. was no easy task.
Asleep before I hit the pillow, I might not have guessed that this night would stick in my head as a favorite memory. However, that vision of human life and celebration stretching across the landscape was one of the most striking scenes I’ve ever witnessed, and stands tall among the many amazing sights I’ve seen thanks to fishing.
Happy Fourth of July!
