33 Hours

Entries from the journal as I scribbled them a few years back, a quick out and back trip to Martha's Vineyard…

Zero Hour

The ride across Vineyard Sound has been quiet. And wet. The forecast for this excursion is rain and seasonably cool. I don’t mind the rain or the temperature it’s the wind that could make this miserable. Right now it’s not bad, maybe 10 knots. Three months ago when I made these arrangements I hoped for clear skies and flat conditions but I’ll take whatever Mother Nature throws at me. I’ve got thirty-three hours to fish straight through until I catch the last ferry tomorrow night back to The World. The goal obviously is to catch as many fish as possible, I’ll settle for one to officially enter into the Derby. Four species: striped bass, bluefish, false albacore and bonito. It sounds like that increases the odds in my favor but it doesn’t. I’ve written off the bonito, am less than hopeful for a shot at an albie, guardedly optimistic about a bluefish and somewhat positive I can catch a striper. Will any catch meet the size requirements of the Derby regulations? Who the hell knows. Does it really matter? Call me Eeyore.

I sit in the truck and wait my turn to disembark the ferry. I don’t know the island all that well but have been here enough to know my way around well enough to get lost with confidence. I laugh to myself because nobody knows where I am. And nobody here really knows me so I can disappear. I told the office I had some personal things to take care of for a couple of days. In the midst of a train-wreck on the tracks of life, nobody questioned what I was really doing. I wonder if I don't go back will anyone notice. I need some time away from it all. I let it go. I leave mainland life behind as I drive off the boat. I’m on The Rock.

Hour 2

After the obligatory stop at the Black Dog for Abby’s t-shirt and a hot cup of coffee, I’m about to go “boots wet.” I stopped by Menemsha Texaco for a few supplies and to get mentally oriented. The rain stopped on the ride out here. By the time I drove around to the other side it started back up. No matter, I’m rigged up and ready for the walk along Lobsterville Beach. The tide is outgoing just past slack. I’ll fish here up until the low and see what I see. The eight weight has an intermediate line and a two feather flatwing, the nine has a sinking line and a small Clouser. Locked and loaded.

Hour 5

The rain continues and man is it dark out here. The wind so far has been benevolent but it really doesn’t matter so I’ll speak of it no more. I ran into some bluefish, had one on the nine weight, not large by the feel of it but it was on nonetheless. Until it bit me off. I moved fast to add a 60lb bite tippet but the blues were gone by the time I had my shit together.

Hour 6

They’re back. Shallow and moving fast. I left my gear up the beach and ran after them like a mad man. I was able to get a few casts into them and fooled the smallest one of the bunch with an orange popper on the seven weight. The size of the blue is irrelevant; the black and white varmint has now been dismissed.

Hour 10

I’m at Big Bridge. I can’t describe the rain other than the air is full of water. I spent some time at the end of the jetty blind casting. Crickets. Ghost Town. Silence, no phones, no computer…I’ll take it. Powering up on Diet Coke and a Clif Bar. Optimism exudes as I head up the beach.

Hour 13

20” striper in the surf on a black lobster buoy popper. Scoreless in terms of the Derby but I feel like I just took Andy Pettitte yard.

Hour 15

I’ve moved up to a spot just outside of Oak Bluffs. I’ve had luck here in the past. It continued. In what little light there was I found some happy stripes on top near some shallow structure. Olive and white Slim Jim on the seven, my last one. Some follows, some short takes and two little guys to hand. Yeah, it’s still raining.

Hour 17

Vineyard Haven. Stopped for more Diet Coke and Snickers at the bridge on Beach Road. The fish from OB had me charged up but fatigue just knocked on my door. I can hear splashing under the bridge. Gotta go.

Hour 19

The splashing at the bridge may have been an auditory hallucination. I just drove out to Tashmoo. Pretty sure I saw a toothless kid in one of the trees playing a banjo. Eerie does not fully describe driving out here in the dark and rain. Geared up and ready to stand on the jetty and wait for Albert when it gets light. Yeah, a little windy. I figured I’d be alone but there’s a dude already out here.

Hour 22

The water at Tashmoo is like the salad bar at The Sizzler on a Saturday night. Shit everywhere. We did see albies splashing - for about 3 seconds a hundred yards off the jetty. I set over and dredged off the beach with the nine weight hoping for a stripe but I think it’s time to move. I just found half a tin of Cope in my fleece...trying to quit but I've been awake for a long time. Sitting here in the truck, soaking wet and cold with most of my worldly possessions in the back seat I realize that right now, right here, there is really nothing else I want. Maybe an albie. Excuse the profanity but I f*c#ing love this.

Hour 23.5

Gas station coffee…nectar of the sleepless. Half a dozen guys walked up from Edgartown Light as I started down. Change in plans, I parked the truck and jumped on to the ferry to Chappy. For some reason the water along the beach just looked fishy. My buddy Z caught a baby jack here once. I’ll take anything. The rain has let up and a pretty woman smiled at me as I passed by her car…blonde hair, baseball hat with the pony tail through the back…yeah man, life is looking up. And then I realized she was talking on the phone and was not looking at me. Crickets. Typical. Whatever. Game back on.

Hour 24

The water here on Chappy is fishy. There is bait everywhere and every few minutes something cuts through it. I’m thinking snapper blues.

Hour 24.75

Nope, little rat stripers as far as I can tell. Three of them for sure. I’ve resorted to the trusty orange Charlie. Never fails on rats.

Hour 27

Back at Lobsterville headed down the beach. The rain turned back on with a vengeance. Apparently there were albies off the jetty this morning. Nobody I talked to said any had been caught. Judging by the number of people there they are expected back this afternoon. Too many people for me, I need open space and obscurity.

Hour 29

It stopped raining. It’s just gray and wet. I just noticed the smell permeating from my waders. It’s more like a cloud. And I’m pretty sure I’ve got trench foot. But the hunt is on. There are fish out there periodically hitting bait on top, stripes I think.

Hour 31.5

Back in the truck. Fishless. I’m talking to myself. I brought two beers with me. I’m on the second. I’ve got a little time left. A few minutes at Big Bridge, a few minutes at that spot outside of OB. Maybe.

Hour 33

I’m calling it, heading to the dock. No fish to enter into the Derby - seemingly a failure but it’s not. Not in the least. It's been a training run for future exploits. I caught another (or maybe the same) 20” striper just before I left the beach at Little Bridge. In the light of my headlamp I watched him swim back into his world. Now I’ve got to return to mine.

I drive on to the ferry and feel the weight of the mainland back on my shoulders. It sits there, as heavy as it was when I arrived. I can carry it. The water is glass and I see stars in the sky as we leave the harbor. All storms eventually pass.

Vineyard Haven Harbor, MA

Mid-Derby Sept 2010

Images

I was asked the other day where I have been all summer.

I’d like to say I’ve been fishing like a mad man since the season began and tell some epic story of hero casts and double digit days.

But I can’t.

I wish I could post up pictures of the thousands of flies I’ve tied since the spring.

But I haven’t.

Life gets busy. As much as you want to and try to stay on a certain course, falling off the rhumb line happens quickly in unsettled weather. Course correction is influenced by things you can’t necessarily control. Destinations change. It is a constant juggling act living one life posing as a happy idiot in the struggle for the legal tender and the other as a happy idiot waste deep in a backwater creek seeking adventure. Someday I’ll get it right.

But for now other things and other people can wait. My daughter moved home in June after a year away. She will begin high school in two weeks, back in her hometown, back with her friends. The summer has been spent making up for lost time and preparing for the start of a new journey, a new adventure. For both of us.

Abby’s talent in art has led her to photography, an interest we both share and something she has suggested on her own that might fit well with the fly-water side of our lives. During our travels this summer she has brought her camera gear along to capture whatever might be encountered. It has been fascinating not just watching her as she photographs different things but more so in listening to her explain what she saw or what she was thinking when she took each shot. These thoughts are as interesting to me as the actual photograph.

We’ve worked on a couple of photograph projects since she came home. One of which was submitting some of her pictures in the photography contest at the Marshfield Fair. It’s not Nat Geo, I know, but it is a start. Abby spent a week going through all her shots and chose four to submit. She was gone last weekend when the fair opened so I went down by myself to see how she had done. I have to say I was a very proud father as I walked through the exhibit.

The ribbons aside, I am proud of Ab for taking something she loves and putting it and herself out there. That is adventure.

Now begins the subtle suggestion of places to visit for great photography like the Low Country, Cudjoe, Baja, NOLO, the Bow, the Dean…

PS: Fishing to resume soon.

North River, MA

21 August 2014

Soul Music

A couple of weeks ago my daughter told me that she wanted to audition for a solo or duet for her last chorus concert of the school year. As we talked about it, one of her comments was something akin to “I want to make some noise going out of the eighth grade.” I smiled to myself because although I was a “band geek” up until the tenth grade, I have never been musically endowed. I smiled again to myself thinking of all the years she and I have sung Jimmy Buffet, Lynrd Skynrd, Kenny Chesney and Eagles songs at the top of our lungs in the truck and on the boat. She may not have received musical talent from me but she has a pretty extensive working knowledge of classic rock and country music.

Abby made it happen. She and a classmate were given a duet solo in the classic “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” On the drive to Maine yesterday for the concert I was as nervous for her as I had been for myself in any ski race I was ever in. But as the chorus took the stage I could see in her eyes the confidence she had in herself and the fire to get up there and put it all out there in front of the audience. She rocked it. I was proud beyond words, not just of her performance but maybe more so of her doing it for herself.

I have seen huge advances, particularly this year, in her self-confidence as she has become more involved with chorus so I was not surprised. As a parent you want your kids to find something that is their “thing.” As much as you want at times to steer them toward something, all you can really do is sit back and let it happen. I was a little surprised last week when she was down for the weekend and told me she wanted to catch a striped bass…on the fly. She has fished with me a lot over the years but I think more to appease me than because she really wanted to. So I always offer but never push.

This time was different. As we got geared up to go down to the river, she commented about how much she missed going to the fly shows this past year and seeing all my fishing friends and that she wants to fish more so she understands what it is that I do and how all the flies that I tie work for different fish.  She has been the one person who has never questioned the fishing or the fly tying business. In fact one night shortly after her mother and I split up we were sitting on the couch watching a movie and she looked over at the tying bench and asked me why I wasn’t tying. I told her that I wasn’t sure I was going to do it anymore. She just looked at me and said, “Dad, it’s not something you do, it’s who you are. It’s your thing.” From an eight year old. That’ll choke you up.

So Abby and I put on the rubber boots and went to the river. We had talked about working on casting a bit but there was pretty good breeze in our faces so I told her I would do the casting and the rest was up to her. I would make the cast and hand her the rod and she would strip the line. It was slow but she kept at it and asked all the right questions about retrieves and line management.

As we stood there I thought about how fast she is growing up and how much of a young lady she has become. The last year has been tough with her living in Maine, not being there every night to hear about what she learned that day or to help her figure something out. And I again thought about how I’ve seen her come into her own this year and how singing and chorus have been a part of that. Having a knack for remembering obscure things I thought of a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote I saw somewhere:

 

“Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence and whereto.”

I stood there in the sun, on the bank of the river, in my favorite place in the world, with my daughter, fishing and started contemplating the commonalities between the art of music and the art of fly fishing. This was interrupted by a strike on the fly. Abby missed the fish but she now knew what the take felt like. We talked about what do when she felt it again and I made another cast.

She stripped the line and I Googled the definition of music on my iPhone. I know, web browsing while fishing – not cool – but the idea for writing this happened at that exact moment and I needed to keep it rolling.

One definition I read was “an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through elements of rhythm, melody, harmony and color.” I was on to something. The expression of ideas and emotions…yup, nailed it there. The act of casting is all about rhythm. Reading the water, accounting for wind and light, making the cast, presenting the fly…it becomes a melody. For it all to work, it has to all happen in harmony. And color…well everyone knows its chartreuse. Except here in Dog Town it’s a number 2 orange Charlie.

So I stood there trying to save all this garbage in my mind to write down as soon as we got back to the Jeep. I made another cast and as I handed Ab the rod she felt that tug, surprised me with a little unrehearsed strip strike and was tight to her first stripe!

We made a few more casts but it was not to be. We walked back to the Jeep and cranked some Kid Rock on the way up the hill.

I hope that in music and singing Abigail finds what I have found in fly fishing. The gift of both is in finding yourself.

North River, MA

4 June 2014

Two Cents

It’s been a while.

Winter is finally over and spring is beginning to grace New England. The last couple of months have been jamb-packed with lining up work for the summer at the real job, seeing my daughter as much as I can and tackling the spring fly shop orders at the vise. There never seems to be enough time to do what needs to be done, what should be done and what I’d like to do. Managing that chess game of life weighs heavy on my mind as I work each night and watch today become tomorrow. Somewhere in the fog of it all are memories of lessons learned along the way about making choices, about often times having to give up one thing to be able to do another. And about responsibility.

I grew up in a family owned construction company and started by scrapping jobs out. I remember staring at a seemingly endless pile of everything that needed to be cleaned out of a kitchen so the finish guys could start cabinets the next morning and my dad telling me that my job was as important as the carpenters job because if I didn’t do mine, they couldn’t do theirs. And then before he went back to being my boss he imparted on me this concept that but for a few lapses I have carried with me in everything I have ever done. It went something like this: No matter what you’re doing, in every part of your life, think about what you’re doing now and how it will affect what you have to do next. And then think about how all that will affect what other people around you are doing now and what they have to do next. And then plan accordingly.

I spend a lot of time reading about fisheries conservation, particularly that of the striped bass. It’s a subject I was once very involved with and vocal about but admittedly I became frustrated with the constant arguments and publicly shied away from it resigning myself to quietly supporting individuals and groups more adept and equipped to explain and progress the issue in public forums. But knowing that in a few weeks social media will be loaded with pictures of dead striped bass, I thought I'd freestyle a bit. The bottom line is that the population of wild striped bass is on the edge of collapse just as it was thirty years ago. I can’t back it up with scientific data and fancy equations…I’m just not that smart. But I’ve seen it. Inshore and offshore, I’ve watched it over the last decade. Everyone I fish with has observed the same thing. And anyone who spends time on the water every week during the New England season, if they’re honest with themselves, has seen it as well.

Discussions (arguments) regarding the who, what and why for the blame of the current state of stripes usually leads to the various state and federal “agencies” tasked with “managing” various fisheries. And then it spreads out among 3 groups; commercial fishermen, recreational fishermen and those who believe the striped bass should be a game fish. The bottom line is we are all to blame - for the population crash and for the wasted time in doing too little to protect what is left of striped bass stocks and to allow for re-population while the blame-game is played. I go back to my dad’s words about “think about what you’re doing right now…”

I have no issue with commercial fishermen harvesting striped bass if the stock supports it but I do have issues with some of the ways it’s done. And I think common sense dictates that if the total number of catchable fish is dwindling than harvest quotas need to be reduced accordingly. I do have issue with the number of people who have commercial licenses and call themselves “commercial fishermen.” I’m sorry but if you don’t make a significant portion of your annual income as a fisherman, than you’re not a commercial fisherman. Going to a baseball fantasy camp every summer for two weeks does not make one a major leaguer.

Recreational fishermen are as much on the proverbial hook as anyone. And I’m one of them. I’ve changed the way I fish and handle fish for release. I fish strictly catch and release now but I have in the past kept legal sized stripers. And I cringe at the thought of how I used to handle fish, the old photos of holding a fish up by the jaw or grabbing one by the gills...now I put as much or more effort into safely and quickly releasing a stripe as I do in catching one. I’ve stopped fishing with some people because of the “Bassmasters hook-and-haul” technique they employ and I’ve come close to all out fist-fights with people dragging a fish over rocks and through sand and mud and then actually throwing the fish back into the water.

Here in Massachusetts we have a recreational “bag limit” of two fish over 28”. This should be changed to one fish and the length increased to at least 32”, maybe 36”. This makes clear sense to protect brood stock and in all fairness, if commercial quotas are cut, so should the recreational bag limit. The commercial quota here in the Commonwealth is set at 1.15 million pounds. According to NOAA there are an estimated 897,000 (really?) annual recreational saltwater anglers who fish in Massachusetts – at a daily limit of two fish at an average of 10.3 pounds each, well do the math.

Guides and charter boat captains have an opportunity here as well to promote catch-and-release or at the least encourage the reduction in the number of fish taken. Not to mention ending the numbers game that is played using each of the potential “fish holders” on a trip. You know what I’m saying.

Poaching. We’ve all seen it. We all know it goes on. To each his own but do it around me and I’ll drop a dime, take a photo and then introduce myself.

Striped bass as a game fish. I would hate to see the way of life of a commercial striped bass fisherman end, but I do support the initiative.

The bottom line is that the fate of the striped bass (and I acknowledge there are other fisheries that need to be addressed) is not solely in the hands of regulatory commissions and bureaucrats, it’s in the hands of all of us who fish for them.

There are some sources and programs to note here for solid information and progressive action.

John McMurray, read his blogs at Reel-Time under Fisheries Conservation

One Anglers Voyage

Facebook group 1@32 Pledge

Release A BreederClub: Stripers Forever

Like so many things in this world now we each have to make decisions to ensure that there is something left for our kids and future generations.

No matter what you’re doing, in every part of your life, think about what you’re doing now and how it will affect what you have to do next. And then think about how all that will affect what other people around you are doing now and what they have to do next. And then plan accordingly.

What we do right now doesn’t just affect our own lives in the moment, it determines the future.

North River, MA

29 April 2014