A woman can walk the beach with a plug or eel just like anyone else. They will catch the same fish that men do because there is no difference. And, if the women are sharpies, they often out catch the guys. I have seen it.
Women I’ve Known
Having raised three girls alongside a fishing wife, I’ve seen firsthand that “girls” with the right gear and attitude, when given the same chances as their brothers, show no gender specificity in the results. All of our daughters and my wife have taken bass into the high 40s, and in one case even a 50.
Back when I fished in Charlestown, Rhode Island, we had a regular – Gloria Osella – who took a 55-pound striper from the breachway one night with foam blowing over the rocks out there the likes of which would scare any of us. At the time her husband had never seen a 50 let alone hooked into one. Women can be good, and there is no reason why, like the rest of us, they can’t be lucky as well as good.
Creative Innovation
Years ago on Provincetown’s Race Bar we had a good hit of fish that were holding in the current during the drop in tide. It was pretty standard stuff that we’ve all seen where the old guys were casting Atom plugs, and the newer surfmen were slinging Rebels. You could see the rip that was holding fish what with the black stains on the surface, occasional pops of feeding linesides, and an extremely rare hook-up. Our twin girls—maybe 14 at the time—were at the top of the rip with floater Rebels. Old Guard regulars below fell victim to many interruptions as the girls followed their fish through the rip. Al Wiseburg, like the rest of us, always yielded to anybody above hooking up and chasing.
However, with two of them trading interruptions to Al’s fishing, he was quickly going from polite to irritable, especially with nary a striper interested in his Junior Atom. The girls, and they can do that, were miffing him off with a capitol P. “Comin’ down, Al,” they warned; 25-pounders swirling and slashing not 5 feet from Al’s waders. As he stepped out of the way, he asked me, “What the heck are they doing?” I had no idea.
While removing one of the stripers (because I never let the girls touch a fish that was waving all those treble hooks), I could hear one of them scratching in the wet sand. It was getting my ash too because when I am servicing them I can’t fish. Fathers fish too.
Of course Susan and Sandra, who from birth developed their own private language as twins often do, never cut me in on their secret, but I fixed that. Just when one of them—I don’t know which one because they are as hard to tell apart at night as when they were in the cradle—was walking back to her original position, I stopped her to ahem, “check her leader for frays.” Lo and behold, the trebles on her plug were copiously-draped with fresh sand eels dug from the nearby sand. How does one compete with that? Going along, I told Al that I had no idea what they were doing. They really cleaned up that night!
Casting With the Guys
Around the early ‘70s a bunch of us used to form up at the Second Rip in P-town for the drop. We had one woman who used to show up at the right time many nights. She could make a Squidder hum and a big blue-swirl Atom swimmer dance to it. Her husband, Jack Townsend, advised her to splash on some extra perfume to identify feminine presence more effectively. All the guys knew she was there on the dark moons. Let me tell you, she held her own with stripers from the beach. That said, there is a dark side for women fishing in some places.
Our daughter, Susan, who is a Maine guide and teaches fly fishing for LL Bean, has fished some beaches where she was not comfortable among mobs of beer-drinking surfmen who heaped abuse upon those they felt were at a disadvantage. She decided to back off on fishing the beach and now fishes primarily from her center console or kayak. A disturbing sign of how men act at times.
Good Equipment
On our first date over 60 years ago, Joyce and I drifted crawdads from a rented canoe in Rhode Island’s Spring Lake. Since that time I have never fished or hunted without Joyce except for when she was involved in child rearing. During the rest of the time I made sure she had the best of everything. There were no leaky waders or old, dried-out mono on a clunky reel for her. If you want someone to catch fish, you must do all you can to prevent failures. If your significant other expresses even the slightest interest in any new gear, you should get it for them. Either that or you could end up fishing with the guys.
There is more to surf fishing than just casting in the dark with the hope for something to come along. Part of the fun and frolic of the beach is self-sufficiency in all aspects of the game—tide, season, surf safety maintenance, etc. It’s even a good idea to teach your partner how to clean fish. Eating the catch is a suitable celebration of having been out there.
Nothing Is Forever
The year our girls were about to go off to college we ran into a good bunch of dream stripers under Highland Light. The girls were kept so busy catching fish. They filled our buggy with big bass—many over 40 pounds—while their father never made a cast. One of the last fish hooked gave Sandra a hard time when it scooted out over the outer bars ripping mono from her spinner at a frightening level. The rest of us gathered beside her as she dealt with a moby striper certain to be better than the 44-pounder that she already had on the beach. Then her line went slack; the dream fish escaping to the depths of the offshore horizon to the east. Sandra bit her lower lip in the way I had seen her do so many times in 17 years, her eyes rolling in the pooling moisture of sniffling disappointment. Seeking to assuage her loss, I put my hand on her shoulder, the way all fathers often do and said, “Honey, there is no crying in surfcasting.”
