John has a 37 Contender. John’s 37 Contender has twin 250-hp Yamahas on the transom. A 37 Contender with 500-hp of propulsion in the hands of someone capable is a serious and righteous machine. Sure it costs some coin to take that ride, but what else are you going to spend it on for kicks? Drugs? Invest in an alpaca farm?
Tagged: fall run, pigpen, striped bass
Before the fish is even at hand, thinking about the next one. Getting that one off and getting out there again before it all dies down. The fish at hand might feel debased by it all, if it even had a cerebral cortex, but as such it’s probably OK just being not dead. Sorry about that. As Snoop says it, “You gotta get yours but fool I gotta get mine.” To steal some lines from another song, Too much of everything is just enough.
Tagged: fall run, striped bass, the blitz
Not the foliage, not the hot cider or the baseball, but this…this is what makes New England in the fall the happiest place on earth.
Tagged: fall run, new england, striped bass, yes you can.
The water outside the inlet looked glassy and the rain bait made audible splashes as they circled together and jumped to escape pursuit. Bluefish caused this. They appeared as bright flashes when they turned sideways and slashed through the tiny fish with their mouths open. Once in a while one would break the surface with its forked tail. Then everything would go down but fish oil slicked on the surface and the water glittered from the refraction off thousands of tiny free-floating scales. Evidence of dismemberment. One bait ball remained tight and we idled over to it and I witnessed something I had never seen before. The rain bait pulsated and we made casts around the edges and waited for the thump.…
Tagged: bait, bluefish, fall run, sea robins
–Book a charter for $600 –Or, fill your boat with $600 worth of fuel –Or, mill about on shore with a boost from Trucker’s Friend to keep your wits in case they ever come close enough. –Drive around aimlessly in aforementioned boat in areas they are supposed to be, looking for busts. –Curse and throw stuff when the scoped birds are diving over bluefish. Claim that you hate their very existence even though you secretly want to stop and cast to them with a wired-on popper. –Finally see missiles projecting out of the water and slashing through rainbait; trip in your haste to make ready at the bow, knocking your teeth into a bow cleat. Calculate cost of future dentistry. –Load backcast, flub forward…
Tagged: fall run, false albacore, forked tailed demons
The fall didn’t end on such a hot note. The decent weather sandwiched between Noreasters left little windows of fishability. If you weren’t in a position to capitalize on those slots on the quick then, well, that was just too bad for you. Too bad for me for way too damn certain. [Exclamation point.] I’m off to Florida next week and I’m not so sure what I’m going to find. Some bad shit went down, man. I haven’t heard much about my ditches on the inside, but butterfly peacocks die when the water temps fall below 60 degrees. Usually not a problem in South Florida but this year…The only way to know for sure is to keep casting.
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…
Tagged: fall run, season enders, the future
Tagged: fall run, flies in lips, sandpaper thumbs, striped bass, stripers, sunset cliche
Tosh Brown and I have been working on making an idea for a book project a reality. A “large format pictorial on fly-fishing the Northeast coast” won’t work without large format-worthy pictures. So we’re blasting our way through some of the fall run this week. We’re in the middle of fishing around New York Metro and surrounding salt, with Tosh working the lens.
Tagged: books, Departure Publishing, fall run, real photographers, striped bass, stripers
