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The picture above is grainy but it illustrates the reason why grown men leave home at 3:30 in the morning to be on the water at first light when it’s a cutting 36 degrees, with no respite on an open boat. Had the photographer (me) not sucked, he would have captured more elegantly the 80 pound bluefin busting the surface right in front of the boat. Instead he got a small bit of fin.
I am not the hardcore one here. That distinction belongs to Capt. Chris Hessert and his buddy Squid Vicious, who took me along on one of their Quixotic quests to hook a bluefin on spinning gear. I experienced it a week ago with Capt. Dave Azar and had to try again one more time.
It’s a low percentage game, but the chance to sight cast to giant pelagic fish has been driving these guys to delay hauling their boats another day, to burn through tanks of gasoline, and to temporarily lose feeling in their hands and toes due to cold running. It’s a trade-off that, for even one hook-up, is totally worth it.
Nothing like coming up on it and having it all laid out in front of you. The representative Northeast scene on a November day, with bait popping and birds busting. Only minor detail is, no one told the game fish. So unless I get a call about the herring run, and the coinciding means to be spontaneous, it ends with a whimper.
There are some things on the horizon: The chance to try for my first chrome upstate around Christmas, the Bay Bridge and Tunnel prospect, the proposed clown knife fish junket, and plans to push into the Florida back country. But it’s all nebulous at the moment.
Until something is set in concrete, it’s time to learn some new knots, get underway with the prescribed equipment maintenance, dress some j hooks on the vise, and break out the skis.
Who loves you, baby?
In the piscatorial sense, we are all whores. No one does right by any one place or species. We experience long stints of faithful behavior to certain waters, or intense periods of focus in pursuit of a single fish, and sometimes we believe in our hearts that we are true.
We are not. “I wish it would never end, this thing between me and you,” we tell the stripers all fall. “Forget about those albies that came rolling through in September. It was a lusty drunken physical thing.”
And then winter comes and the striped bass go scarce and as Hank Williams Jr.** sings it, “But sometimes Lord, she just ain’t always around.”
I got this little side thing going on down South.
There will be plenty of time for longing, until temptation comes via plane ticket. But it’ll all work out in the end. Northern pike were always my first anyhow.
*(paraphrasing Chris Rock)
**(Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound)
At the moment I’ve got three goals in life: To play an acoustic set in a dive bar, catch a 100-pound tarpon on fly, and live somewhere where I never have to wear shoes again.
Ted Williams (the hitter, fighter pilot and fisher) 0nce boasted that he would never have to wear a tie. Good on that, but his time came before business casual. Put me in a place where I don’t have to wear anything more cumbersome than flops and it’ll be alright.
New York’s good for a lot of things but come November it’s time again to feel the restrictions of protective footwear. In a few weeks the stripers that I never seem to have time to fish for will be gone and there will be people in locales way south of the Mason Dixon still worried about sun poisoning and of fish ripping the line off the deck and busting their knuckles on a backing run.
Say what you want about living where you live but odds are it doesn’t have a saving grace that compares to that.
Sleepy alligator in the noon day sun...
That shadow across its back is from my head. It was actually closer before I fumbled for my camera. Gators don’t mind the brackish too bad, do they?
The two movies that fishermen gravitate to are Jaws and A River Runs Through It. Other than some crazy big fish action the movies are disparate in countless ways. Yet they are quoted by the same anglers, often on the same trip, and sometimes to the point where you want to punch the quoter in the sternum in hopes of jarring some original material.
But there is one common unifying thread to both movies: That song. It takes on a major role in the shark flick, but you could blink and miss it in River, when Norman walks in to bail Paul out of the drunk tank and the little old man is singing it. So any future fishing movie better have this song somewhere in the story line or it won’t amount to much that’s worth watching. Take heed:
Show me the way to go home I'm tired and I want to go to bed I had a little drink about an hour ago And it went right to my head Where ever I may roam On land or sea or foam You will always hear me singing this song Show me the way to go home.
I’m not supposed to go there anymore but nobody’s usually around and nobody would say anything if they were, and it gets dark now at around 5pm with Daylight Savings and, what have you, and sometimes if you need to find fish there are actions to be taken.
Fishy Kid, the org started by Cameron Mortenson of Fiberglass Manifesto and his buddy to help parents get their kids psyched about fishing through a kids coloring contest, is now running an ADULT COLORING CONTEST. Who’s got skills?
Photo the exclusive property of Toshbrown.com
Those are the hands of Jason Puris of Thefin.com releasing a striper in the surf. Jason proved a huge help to getting our book project off the ground.
Tosh Brown took some awesome shots in incredibly harsh conditions and posted some of them here, in a lightbox on his site.
Now my job starts. Time to put some real thought onto the page, rather than firing off blog posts.
Thanks again to Jason, Paul Dixon, Jim Levison, John McMurray, Mike Warecke, and the Salty Fly Rodders of New York.
I wasn’t going to pay for it. I found the only copy in my local Barnes & Noble, barely visable in the “Sports” section of the news stand behind a misplaced rap magazine.
I flipped open to an article called “Eden’s Tarpon” and couldn’t put the mag down after that. I read almost the whole thing just standing there. It has great photography, interesting writing, no top ten lists, no “look at me Ma, I’m fly fishing” articles, and even a solid Head reference.
I was going to shelve it but then decided these guys need to get paid so they can keep doing it. $15. And thanks for the bluefish love.
