With increased crowds and unnecessary headaches aplenty, I am not a fan of fishing on holiday weekends, and Labor Day weekend is no exception. However, some nights you just get ‘that feeling’ and know that a surf session is in order.
I pulled into the parking lot shortly after sunset and was pleasantly surprised to see the only other vehicle was that of my fishing partner, Jay. An early tide, favorable wind, and Saturday night of Labor Day weekend usually sounds the death blow for this spot, but things were already looking up.
After completing a short walk down the beach, Jay and I arrived at the first rocky point and decided we would start there. We clumsily made our way out into the inky night surf, guided by the faint glimmer of moonlight and the just-barely-visible disturbance on the water’s surface caused by the earliest stages of a dropping tide sliding over the jagged structure. We climbed up on top of a car-sized rock, set up positions next to each other, and began casting eels up current before slowly swinging them down the drop-off. It didn’t take long before one of us hooked up, and for the next few hours we had a steady pick of striped bass well into the 30-pound class.
The fish were seemingly everywhere as hits came at any time from the moment the eel hit the water, all the way through the swing, and even well out into the deep as we would often feed line out into the current if we didn’t connect by the time the eel passed directly in front of us.
At one point I jokingly commented to Jay that there were so many fish in front of us, and since the water between us and the shore was still deep enough for a fish to safely feed, that it would be funny to hook one casting back onto dry land. We both laughed at the idea, but I also took it as a challenge, further making light of the concept by facing away from shore to make a cast blindly over my back. I awkwardly held the rod over my head, rod tip pointed straight up at the stars, and began the retrieve – and then I got hit. Assuming it was a schoolie I set the hook with an exaggerated ‘chopping wood’ motion, swinging out toward the sea, but the line barely moved – this was a decent fish.
I quickly spun around, faced the shore, and watched as the water exploded. The bass ran straight at me, went around my rocky perch, and headed for the rip and deeper water out front. A short battle ensued, and I eventually slid a 42-pound striped bass to my hand, my best fish of the tide.
The bite continued to produce stripers from the teens to 30-plus pounds, and Jay added another low-40 to the night’s score. Wholly satisfied and completely exhausted, we eventually called it a night, joking that we’d have to make sure to take a few casts back to shore every time going forward at this spot, but the absurdity of what had occurred and the unlikeliness of it being duplicated prevented either of us from following through on the plan.
That was until one year later when Jay and I returned to the same spot, on the very same night, and once again got into another strong pick of fish on eels. Not long after hooking the first few fish, we started talking about the backwards cast from the previous year. We laughed again about what had happened and the possibility of lightning striking twice, but for some reason it took about half of the tide before I decided to try to replicate it.
With much pomp and circumstance, I set up my next cast as best I could. While simultaneously hoping to replicate the previous years’ experience and knowing full well there was no way in hell that it would happen again, I launched an eel over my back and toward shore. I put so much ceremony into the production that the eel actually landed on dry land, but I began my retrieve just the same, still facing the wrong way out to sea. Several cranks later the water exploded behind me, and you guessed it, I was tight to another large striped bass! The same battle followed as the year before with the bass buzzing my rock to head for deep water, and once again I slid a 42-pound fish to my hand a few minutes later.
If I hadn’t lived it myself, I’d have a tough time believing what had happened on those two nights separated by exactly 365 days. I’d love to tell you that on the third anniversary of that first fish that lightning struck once again, but it didn’t. To be honest, I didn’t even fish on that next year as there was a big surf pounding the coast caused by an approaching nor’easter. I did try again on year four, but my logbook entry is marked by a big ZERO followed by notes indicating that not only were no fish landed, but not a single hit was had after almost three hours of slinging eels.
It has been more than a decade since the first of those two nights, and I have yet to even manage a single additional hit casting back to shore from that same rock. I’ve tried eels and chunks, needlefish and metal lips, but they all come up empty. I am a firm believer that something must be a regular, repeatable, and predictable occurrence to hold weight when it comes to surf fishing, but I can’t help trying to duplicate the feat one more time!
