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As much as I don't want to, I'm forced to
acknowledge that the last of the striped bass
have passed by the northern Massachusetts
shoreline on their way to the Chesapeake.
This is a bittersweet admission to make;
bitter because I won't feel the tug of a
linesider on the 9 wt. for six long months,
sweet because I'll sleep past 5 am and maybe
lose this tic in my left eye that is a symptom
of sleep depravation and always manifests itself
toward the end of striper season. Now, while
still fresh in memory, is the time to reminisce.
I start by looking at the fishing log, and though
only numbers and dates, the events are recent
enough that I can add flesh to the bare bones
of the log. Vivid fishing memories are always
easy to conjure.
If the IRS were to audit the fishing log, their
analysis would look like this: 77 days fishing
(less than previous years); 471 fish caught (again,
less), 6.116883 average number of fish per outing;
146 fish caught in August (best month), 17 fish
caught in October (worst month); 22 fish caught
on August 29 (best day but far below previous
year's best day); ten days with zero fish;
fifteen days with 10 plus fish. And I'm sure
they would figure a way to tax me accordingly.
These numbers, though, tell but a small part
of the story.
For example, the log shows I caught my 300th
fish of the season on July 28th. What it doesn't
show is that my 300th fish was a very large blue
that took me to the backing and then just hunkered
down so that I felt as if I were hooked to a
fireplug. I don't catch many blues where I
fish (this was the first of the season) and
I thought I had a 40-inch striper on. But it
was with delight, not disappointment, that,
after a noble struggle, I horsed him into
shallow water and saw the yellow flank and
malevolent eye of a big blue. The log also
shows that I caught 6 linesiders on July 10,
with no mention that this was the day of the
annual Eagle Hill River Striped Bass Fly Fishing
Derby, a gag tournament I host every year that
is really just a reason to get together with
friends and share a few drinks and a lot of
laughs. This year's prized fish was a 31-inch
bass, and the ecstatic two-time winner (he's
the Lance Armstrong of the Eagle Hill Derby)
went home clutching "The Golden Cup," an athletic
cup painted gold and mounted on a block of oak.
The previous year he was the proud recipient of
"The Golden Fly," a gold colored zipper mounted
on a plaque. It was also on this day that I saw,
way up in the estuaries, two terns defending their
nest from a huge great blue heron. The big heron,
prehistoric looking in flight, squawked like a
pterodactyl as the terns, maybe one tenth his
size, fearlessly fretted him until he was forced
to flee.
Two days later, according to the log, I caught
one bass, but I know that I took that fish at
Nobska Light in Woods Hole before going out
shark fishing with Josko Catipovic and hooking,
but failing to land, an eight foot mako, which,
uncaught, is ineligible to be recorded in the
sparse log, but whose spectacular jumps and
long fight will be forever recorded in my
memory.
Even the no-fish days weren't as bleak as that
bare 0 seems to suggest. On one of these days
I explored the miles and miles of estuarine
channels in Plum Island Sound. With the tall
marsh grass and dropping tide it was possible
only to see forward to the next sharp bend, of
which there were many, and it wasn't long
before I felt like the character in Steinbeck's
Grapes of Wrath who wanders for
days lost in a colossal cornfield. Though I
knew that the open water was to my starboard
and I only had to beach the yak and climb up
on the marsh bank to see exactly where I was,
I continued on feeling lost. We have to, after
all, find adventure where we can.
But some adventures are better avoided. On
August 1 the log displays, in stark black and
white, that I caught eight striped bass, but
I remember it is the day I nearly drowned when,
as I was obliviously fishing a river mouth,
my kayak floated off with the tide. Of course
the PFD was in the yak, and I was literally up
a creek without a paddle or a pfd with a flood
tide on the rise. With no options I swam for
the yak, and, fortunately, retrieved it, but
not before I came as close to drowning as I
ever want to.
On another no-fish day there was so much bait
dimpling the ocean's flat surface that I stopped
casting and held out both hands, palms up, to make
certain it wasn't raining. The bait flashed
silver around the retrieved fly line and was
so thick I inadvertently snagged a number of
silversides on a fly easily the same size, yet
there were no bass and I never even saw a splash,
no less caught a fish.
Perhaps my most memorable day was August 26,
when I launched the kayak after work and fished
the estuaries in front of my house. The sun
soon kissed the horizon, and the water turned
to lavender, the prelude to turning black with
the night. I took a few fish before it got
too dark, and on the paddle home I cast into
a cove that usually holds fish. A large bass
takes the flat winged fly with authority, and
the blur through the guides turns from the
yellow of the floating line to the orange of
the backing as I palm the reel to check the
initial run. When the fish slows I go to the
reel but something's amiss; the wooden handle
wobbles as I crank and then comes off in my hand,
and I, who pontificates about equipment maintenance,
find myself fighting a large fish with a
handle-less reel. I strip line into the
cockpit of the yak, and the bass takes line
out, and this goes on so long that it now is
quite dark and I can only hope the line doesn't
tangle. I finally bring him to hand, a fat
29-inch fish, that when I shine the headlamp
on him, displays a fluorescent blue, a color
I've never seen on a striped bass before, in
some of the small thunderbolt patterns that
make up his stripes. I release the fish and
do my best to repair the reel in the dark using
only a pair of nail clippers and manage to
re-attach the handle.
As I paddle in the blackness a coyote howls
out on the marsh, a lonely, mournful dirge
that immediately sets every domestic canine
within a one-mile radius barking as they
easily recognize it as not one of their own.
Alone on the dark water, it seems an apt
metaphor. ~ Dave
About Dave:
Dave Micus lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts. He is an
avid striped bass fly fisherman, writer and instructor.
He writes a fly fishing column for the Port City Planet
newspaper of Newburyport, MA (home of Plum Island and Joppa Flats)
and teaches a fly fishing course at Boston University.
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