Please, don't bite your cork

At the start of the 2021 season, I said this year will be great. New job, no more 20 to 30 hour per week commute, work from home...I'm fishing. And it started like that. The problem was the striped bass were few and far between. The fishing Gods on social media posted a plethora of pictures of bountiful stripers on a regular basis, some were obviously of the same fish at different angles and views, I think there were even some wardrobe changes involved. But what I saw on the tube was not what I saw on the water.

 I hit it hard for the first month. Twenty plus years on the same water, more time now to fish, I figured it would be, as the cool kids say, epic. It was not. The movement patterns of inshore stripers here combined with tide, moon, wind, weather and all the things I've watched over the years never materialized. It's been on the decline on for several years but last year left me shaking my head. To the point that by July I just didn't go out. I made a few short excursions just "to see" but I got black and white striped more than I saw silver stripes. By August, I resigned myself to hoping for the fall run. I just didn't fish. I went out in September a few times, picked up a few rats here and there and one fish over 28" but the numbers were not there, and they were not in the places I expected them to be. So I waited.

My birthday is in early October. It usually coincides with a big push of fish through the river eating anything that gets put in front of them. Over the last 15 or so years I've opted to spend that day or one near it by myself on the water. It usually starts about a cup of coffee after sunrise and ends about a warm can of Bud after sundown. This year started with the coffee but was fueled all day by water and Gatorade because I paddled and walked more miles in the backwater and marsh than I ever have. And I found fewer fish than ever.

I started out down The Avenue. First light, start of the incoming, usually a lot of small fish. Nothing. Stopped at the Sure Hole, spent longer than I should have. Nothing. Moved around the corner to the Bathtub, even the cormorants were confused. Shot up the Expressway, no signs of fish. A ton of bait in the breakdown lane, no striped bass. Took the exit to the Escape Hatch, usually good for one or two at the interchange over the Big Flat. Nope. Crickets. Ducked into the Small Bathtub, got out of the kayak and walked the edges and spent way too much time there. Still nothing. Took the Back Road up to the Branch. Years ago it was always a sure thing along the edges of the grass. This time, nada. Made it to the Branch and got out to walk the grass around The Bellagio. I got my steps in, practiced casting into the wind but that was it. Screwed out of Bellagio and parked across the river at the Back Door. I've never not caught at least the smaller striper I've ever seen there. Well, this time I caught one almost bigger than the smallest striper I've ever seen. And for like five minutes I thought this could be the turning point. And then it was ten minutes. And then fifteen. After twenty I bailed and headed into the marsh to the Secret Hole, The Big Hole, The Dirty Hole, and lastly the Branch Hole. Bait everywhere, cormorants freebasing sand eels and silversides, no striped bass.

I paddled out of the Branch about midday, headed for the mouth and picked my way out to the outside. I turned the corner and headed for the Olive Garden. This time of year, slack tide, they used to congregate in the rocks. Even bluefish would be mixed in. Not this year. I fished the Garden, the Outback, Sully's Tavern, the Mudslide, the Rockslide and the entire length of Bluefish Alley. One fish, about 20" came out of the boulder field at the bottom of Rockslide, Almost seven hours in and two fish. Happy Birthday.

I headed back inside and went upriver on The North to The Place That Shall Remain Nameless. Usually this is a low tide spot, but I was grasping for straws. The top of the mud was starting to show as the water dropped so I got out and walked its edge and made a couple hundred casts. About cast number Two Hundred and Six I went tight. A small shad, not what I expected but I was grateful. Grateful enough to get back in the boat and back to the South. 

I peeled into the Bowl got out of the boat and walked the edge of the Back Corner and the Corner Store. It was getting late, I hoped it was all going to start to happen as it has so many times before. About the time I was ready to call it I got lit up just off the Corner Store. One nice fish on, two following it. I thought I was in. I was wrong. No code had been cracked, no pattern had been figured out, I just spent another hour practicing my cast.

The sun was getting low, I paddled across the Bowl to Dog Piss Beach. This is where I planned to make my stand. Drink my Birthday Beer, howl at whoever heard me and catch some fish. When I beached the boat and took stock of my perishables, I realized I didn't have my Birthday Bud and no one would hear me if I did howl. But I threw line anyway. Over and over. And then it was one fish. And a few casts later, another. And another. All cookie cutter 20-22" stripes. Four in about 20 minutes. And then crickets. But I kept casting. Into the dark. And then I headed for home. Paddling in the dark I recalled years past of twenty-five or thirty fish days, sometimes upwards of fifty on my birthday sabbatical. The times they are changing.

I'll fish again this year. But it won't be all go no quit big nuts Harry Stamper (obscure Armageddon reference) fishing. The stock in my view, whether you "catch and release" on your own, meat fish or 6 Pack it all day everyday can't sustain it. 

Striped bass are in decline. It cannot be disputed. We've seen it happening since almost the resurgence after the last crash. We've all played a part in it. We've all kicked the can down the road. So, what can be done? We can stop bitching about it on social media. Stop pointing fingers and get behind a management plan. The people who make these "management decisions" need to hear from those concerned with the state of the striped bass stock. Read my words, not the "fishery", but the actual stock.

The deadline for comments on the Draft Amendment 7 to the Striped Bass Management Plan is today, April 15, 2022. I'm not smart enough to understand all the science, I'm just a fisherman (fisherperson), but the folks at the American Saltwater Guides Association have put a ton of information and avenues for action together at

 American Saltwater Guides Association | Linktree

and

Striped Bass Amendment 7: Public Comment Guide - American Saltwater Guides Association

Today is the last day to make your voice heard.

And please, in this year's posts, don't bite your cork.

 

South River, MA

15 April 2022

    

somethng from nothing

Around this time of year, we see and hear words like happiness and joy tossed around and although I recognize the sentiment in which they’re used, I wonder if we understand the difference anymore. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a co-worker a while back while looking at a photo of a fish that I had caught the previous weekend.

 

A comment was made, more in the form of a question than an assertion, that I “must find happiness in fly fishing.” I began to respond in the affirmative and then paused, revising my response to say that I “receive joy” from the process of fly fishing but that the end result, catch or no catch, really has nothing to do with it. My co-worker seemed perplexed and asked why I would spend so much time doing something if I was not concerned with some form of a” prize” at the end. I dug way back in the memory bank to the psychology and philosophy classes I took in college and the study sessions we had over cheap beer. I explained happiness is corporeal, based on an attachment to an expected reward of doing or receiving something. It usually accompanies a successful completion of whatever is being done.  Joy is ethereal, connected more to the spiritual side or reason for doing something. The joy of doing something, if we’re lucky, is always present regardless of the outcome.



I know, a little deep. And while it is New Year’s Eve, no, I have not opened the tequila. Not yet.      



I went on to explain the events, the process if you will, behind the fish in the photograph. I had spent an hour fishing one section of water along an edge of an oyster bar that dropped off into a deeper channel. There were fish moving up on to the bar from the channel but were being selective. I had a few follows but none would commit and take the fly. I had considered changing the fly but the one I was using is my go-to pattern and I knew eventually it would get taken. I explained it’s like the twenty-dollar Casio that’s been on my wrist for almost as long as I can remember. It’s beat to hell, isn’t fancy and just keeps working. Even when the battery runs out, it’s still correct twice a day.

I kept casting at those fish, watching them follow the fly, relying on the strong sense of confidence that years of the ebb and flow of trial and error impart. It is still life’s greatest teacher, earned and then learned. Eventually one fish followed the fly and turned off it and paused. I water-hauled the fly and put it back out in front of him off to his left. I knew he was going to take it before he did. Two strips into the retrieve he turned on it and ate it. I felt “happy” as the line went tight, but it lasted only for as long as it took it to release him. I have no immediate recollection of that “happiness” today. The joy from the process of working those fish, staying with that one fly, watching the take and then seeing him swim away afterward…I feel that as I write this today as I do the blood in my veins.



So, in the final hours of 2019, I bid all a Happy New Year and hope that in that happiness, whether you fish or not, we all find joy in 2020.



See you on the other side.



South River, MA

31 December 2019

A Life Encountered

The idea for this collection of obscure thoughts and trivial observations from the mud began in early 2010. I was in one of those transitional places that life puts us in and desperate to find something my mind could focus on that didn’t involve lawyers or money. So I bought a ninety-nine cent notebook at Target and started putting words in it.  It took three years of thinking about it, reading every fly fishing blog I could find, blind writing exercises and lots of pages from that notebook being ripped out and thrown away before finding the courage to hit the publish button the first time.

I found a few surviving pages from that first notebook this morning filed away in an old folder in the back of my desk at the office. I had been looking for them since teaching a fly tying class over the winter and talking about a very simple fly that had been shown to me by an older gentleman nine years ago. My encounter with him was brief and random but became part of the underpinning of whatever this thing has become.

It was a Friday night and I had been on a job site in Boston all day. Knowing beforehand that I’d be coming out of the city late in the day and not wanting to sit in Cape traffic on Route 3 I had thrown my gear in the truck with the plan of stopping off in Weymouth and fishing one of my old haunts. It wasn’t until I got there and reached in the back for my waders that I realized they were still sitting in the driveway at home. I knew the water was a little too cool to comfortably wet wade but the sun was still up and the air was warm. So I changed into a pair of shorts I had remembered, laced the Timberland’s back up, walked into the water and started casting.

I was a few fish into the evening when the sun fell from the sky and the air cooled as it met the water. I started to shiver a little and stood there for a few moments watching the skyline of downtown Boston start to light up. That’s when I saw him, off to my right fitted out in hip waders, a flannel shirt and one of those old caps that train engineers used to wear. I walked out of the water, sat on a rock where I had left my gear bag and a jacket and tried to warm up as the old timer hooked up on nearly every cast. He was smoking a cigar as he fished and its sweet smell washed over me bringing back memories of watching Pudge and Yaz from the bleacher seats at Fenway.

I was thinking about heading for home when he looked back, walked out of the water, stopped in front of me and introduced himself as, “Name’s O’Reilly.”

“You lasted longer than I thought you would.”

I laughed and said, “Yeah, I forgot my waders in the driveway this morning. I’m an idiot.”

He took a puff off what was left of the cigar, looked back at the city skyline and said, “Doesn’t make you an idiot. I forget things every day.”

He leaned his rod up against a boulder and sat down on a rock next to me. There was enough light left that I could see it was an old Fenwick rigged with a Pflueger. I liked him immediately. We talked for about twenty minutes…about striped bass in the seventies, the crash of the population and how it had come back, his twenty year hitch in the Navy and how much the world had changed in his seventy-four years.  He pointed to the lights of Boston with the cigar in his hand.

“Life used to be simple but the world got real complicated, real fast. It all goes too fast, no one slows down anymore.”

I nodded in agreement and we sat in silence.

Taking the last puff on his cigar he looked at me and said, “Life is like this cigar, at first you think it’ll last for a long time, you can see it, feel it, taste it, smell it, watch it burn to the very end and then linger in the smoke until it disappears. And then it’s all gone.”

He turned away, looked toward Boston again and quietly said, “I’m in the smoke now.”

He sighed, turned back toward me and reached into his shirt pocket and brought out something rolled up in aluminum foil. I thought it would be another cigar as he unrolled the foil but it turned out to be four flies about five inches long. He held one up, just a simple reverse tied bucktail with some flash in the core, and then handed them all to me.

He pointed at my rod and said, “I don’t know what you’re using, but this is the only fly I ever use. It’s what has worked for me all these years. You take ‘em, kid, I don’t think I’ll be needing them anymore.”

He stood up and pointed to a man not much older than me standing under the trees behind us and said, “Guess it’s time to go. That’s my boy, keeping an eye on me like his mother used to. Used to be I took him to the playground on Friday night, now he brings me out to play.”

I walked back to the parking lot with them and shook hands with my new friend as his son helped him into the car. He broke down the rod and as he put it in the trunk he explained his father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and that while the days were the hardest, his dad seemed to have more clarity in the evening hours so on good days they would come out to make a few casts. I shook his hand and he thanked me for spending a few minutes with his dad on what was probably his last time out fishing.

I’ve forgotten the fish that I caught that night but I’ll never forget Mr. O’Reilly. I fished those flies he gave me all that season. They caught just as well as other flies I used but a fish on those flies had more meaning. I still build a few of them every season and think of him every time I tie one on to the leader.

The smoke may be gone but the story lives.

From the early pages

15 May 2019

the day the music died

I knew it was a bad idea before I did it. 

I had been into fish as soon as I splashed the kayak. Paddling down river into the tide I had run through pod after pod of schoolies crashing bait on the surface. Conscious of mooring balls and channel markers I tactically fished the edge of the grass and waited to clear the hazards before following the bigger splashes in the channel. It was early, the schoolies were eating on every other cast and other than Wilson Pickett lyrics running through my head I had the water to myself.

Up ahead the tails slapping the surface in the channel were a lot bigger than the rats I had been pulling out of the shallows. I caught sight of a Whaler with two dudes in it both hooked up on fish about a quarter mile in front of me. I wanted to get into those bigger fish before they ran up on me. I cleared the last two mooring balls and a few more paddle strokes put me close to the edge of a pretty good boil. I launched a cast into the middle of it and in a few strips was tight. It was a bigger fish than I expected and let it pull line as I put it on the reel instead of stripping it in. When it went tight on the rod, I started singing “Mustang Sally” out loud with Wilson.

You might ask, “Why is that relevant?” Well, since you asked, I’ll explain. The rod I was fishing was a signature 2018 Cheeky Schoolie Tournament Thomas and Thomas Exocett 8 weight I had won in May. The first day I fished it was one of those days you don’t forget, like one of those days when the sky opens up, the sun shines everywhere and angels sing. It was like a junior high relationship,  like we were made for each other and nothing else existed. We brought a lot of fish to hand that day. I love that rod.

When I fish, I usually have an album or mixed play list from a particular artist or time period playing in my mind. That day The Best of Wilson Pickett was on a continuous loop in my head so I christened the rod “Mustang Sally.” Every time I have looked at that rod or picked up since, all I hear is that song. So I sang and as I brought that fish boat-side I let the chorus rip.

   

That’s when everything went to shit.

With a few feet of line outside the last guide I reached into my pocket to get the Iphone ready because as we all know; if something isn’t on Instagram it didn’t really happen. While I was trying to open the camera app with one hand and hold the rod in front of me with the other the paddle started to slide and the fish ran to my rear turning the bow of the boat with it. As the bow turned, the Whaler I mentioned before came into view conveniently at the same second the wake it had pushed reached me. It was right about then that I noticed the tide and current had pushed me back to the two mooring balls and I was close to colliding with one of them. I stuffed the phone back in my pocket, wedged the paddle under one arm and tried to get control of the fish, which had managed to pull out enough line to get on the other side of the mooring ball.

That’s when the music went out. Remember what it sounded like when you’d bump the turntable and the needle would run across the record? Well, that’s what I heard as the music ended and a pink Sluggo went flying by my head. And then everything was quiet.

But only for a split second because as I watched the fish turn back and circle around the mooring ball and under the kayak, from somewhere in the back of my mind I heard Neville laughing and yelling at me.

“Oh yeah, you’re in the shit now!”

I tried to paddle with one hand to get up current of the mooring ball but just got pushed up against it. I was fucked. The fish had gotten one good wrap around the mooring line and was going for another. That’s when Nev came into view (self-diagnosed temporary hallucination) bobbing along on his back with a pair of Aqua-Man water wings and a can of Jack’s Abbey Post Shift clutched to his chest.

He took a sip, looked up at me with a very serious expression on his face and said, “You’re going to fucking break my rod!”

Knowing he was a mirage I chose not to respond and leaned into the water to try and unwrap the fish. What I should have done was back off the line, get the rod and line under control and then figure out how to get to that fish or break it off. But I didn’t. I put the butt the rod between my knees and reached down frantically grasping at the line trying to get to the fish and in so doing nearly flipped the kayak. I didn’t go over but somewhere in the blur of a split-second I heard that sound none of us want to hear. Flopping around in the boat had popped the rod from between my knees and the angle and force of the line with the weight of me and the kayak bent the rod and broke the tip just past the last ferrule.

“Noooohhhh, you fucking broke my rod. Damn it. I told you…I can’t believe it.”

Looking at Nev, who wasn’t really there, I raised my hands up in the air and shrugged.

From the Whaler I heard one of the guys yell, “Yeah, that sucks, man. It happens.”

Neville laughed and pointed at me.

“Just send it to us, we’ll fix it.”

He took another sip of beer, eased back on his water-wings and kicked his way out of my view and out of my mind.

I did get the fish released. Then I called Jill, had her meet me on the riverbank with another rod and went back out. There were more fish that day but no music.

Over the last couple of weeks as I’ve looked at that rod sitting in its tube in the corner of my tying  room I’ve heard the lead-in to “Thunderstruck” faintly fade in and out. I’m getting that feeling. I fucking love that rod.

 I may re-name it Malcolm when we get back on the water and make some more music.  

South River, MA

7 August 2018

7:216

216 x 2 = 432

Four hundred and thirty-two…that’s how many anglers registered for last week’s Cheeky SchoolieTournament. Think of it this way, between 0600hrs and 1430hrs, just from the tournament participants, there was close to three quarters of a mile of fly rods throwing approximately 8.59 miles of fly line on Cape Cod. At the buzzer over 9000 inches of striped bass were caught, recorded by photo, released and entered into the tournament. Who knows how many total fish/inches of fish were actually caught. Based on what The Beast (the other half of Team Dirt Bag) and I saw, the number  blows my mind.

 

Cheeky CEO Ted Upton

The rules are simple. Two anglers per team, fly rod only, wade-fishing on Cape Cod only, the largest four fish are recorded by camera with tape measure and photo puck and all are released. The tourney is billed as “a low barrier to entry, grass roots style event designed to encourage the interest and growth of saltwater fly fishing.” What does that mean? It means anyone with a fly rod can enter and stands a chance to be in the group of top rods at the end of the day. All those who fish regardless of whether they are an industry pro, guide, weekend warrior or newbie all start out from the same place, endure the same wind, weather, water and tide conditions and are all subject to the fish either being here in force or not. Off-season intel development, pre-fishing, and rolling the dice on whether to fish one spot hard or keep moving…that’s up to each team. Home-water status by being a Cape resident – that’s just life, man.

This year was the seventh running of the tournament. I’ve been at all of them. The first year there were about thirty of us standing in the dirt parking lot of a beach bar as the sun rose over the Bass River. It started out really as a group of friends going out to catch as many small fish as possible to raise a few bucks for conservation and charity groups. It has evolved into the world’s largest catch-and-release fly fishing only tournament. At this point in history, based on what science tells us, there may be an argument to be made that it has become the largest event of its kind in the universe.

But seriously, the whole thing was created to be a season opener, to bring fly anglers together for a fun day and generate some enthusiasm for our sport over a few beers while raising money and awareness to benefit our fisheries. Judging by the turnout this year, and the joint $3000.00 donation to Stripers Forever by Cheeky and the American Fly Fishing Trade Association at the end of the day, the mission was accomplished again this year and expectations exceeded.

The size of the tournament may have grown, but from the beginning, at its heart, it was about the fish and about each other.

It still is.

Well done.

Cape Cod, MA

25 May 2018