Posts tagged “striped bass”

Here Is New York

Posted on March 29th, 2012

After September 11, 2001, longtime friends of my in-laws sent around an email detailing a new emergency response plan. Should all forms of modern communication cut out once again, we were to follow one simple directive: Head to McSorley’s. Located at 15 East 7th Street in the once dangerous but now hipster Lower East Side, McSorley’s serves beer. You must buy two–either light or dark–and you must keep drinking to keep your seat. When I first moved to the area we went once a month on Saturday afternoon, crammed around tiny wooden tables and ordered rounds. And plates of cheese and crackers, with slices of onion and extra sharp mustard. There was nothing hip, cool, insider, or happening about it but to me it…

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Early

Posted on March 20th, 2012

Striped bass are already spawning in parts of the Chesapeake Bay. This according to my good friend John Page Williams of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, who also added that the hickory shad have started running. In certain areas of the northeast, the striped bass never left, finding palatable water temperatures in this non-winter. The Weather Channel reported 1,500 record highs across the country last week. I am wearing shorts. Will this be the new normal? Maybe my late April trip to the Susquehanna will not be my first dance with striped fish this year after all.

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The Only Time I Bit The Cork

Posted on February 7th, 2012

Thanksgiving 2002. I don’t know why I felt compelled to do it, maybe an insecure need to prove I actually did catch that bass on a fly rod. Although in reality it proves nothing; it could have been a stage prop for all you know. (It wasn’t, piss off.) A recent post by Bows and Browns reminded me of my personal evolution in fish-related point and shoot. I have a large catalogue of hero shots that will likely sit unviewed for generations until my offspring’s progeny discover them in a hidden box and discard them after the estate sale. For a while I wanted to document everything. I bought a sleek and compact Elph and thought that Eastman Kodak really hit on something big…

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MENHADEN: ROCK THE VOTE!

Posted on November 1st, 2011

The fishing has been sucking. Here’s a chance where we can all actually do something about it. Rather than mince words, I’ll paste them directly from a mailing by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation: In a matter of days, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) will meet to discuss the fate of menhaden (AKA the most important fish in the sea). At the end of that meeting, it will adopt an addendum to its menhaden management plan, which will determine new overfishing thresholds and target fishing rates. Now, more than ever, we need your help. In 32 of the past 54 years, we have overfished menhaden, and its population now stands at its lowest point on record—a mere 8 percent of what it once was!…

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Bass, Menhaden, Everything

Posted on October 19th, 2011

The striped bass of the Chesapeake, and therefore the Eastern Seaboard, got a dose of good news this week with a big spike in the Young of the Year numbers. I spoke briefly with my friend John Page Williams of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation about it, and he said it has everything to do with ideal weather conditions during spawn and early life stage. Of course, the best news for the striped bass in the long run could come out of the ASMFC meeting in Boston in two weeks. Williams and his friends in the CCA and other conservation groups have been working hard to ensure that the result comes down in favor of protecting the bass. “It looks to be a landmark vote,”…

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Karmic Payoffs Do Not Exist

Posted on October 15th, 2011

I emailed the forecast late last night to Nick Murray, who responded “Too late to back out now.” OK, then. I’d already bailed on a Montauk trip this week, and got burned by it. Stripers still eat during Small Craft Advisories.   You go on days like today, you figure you are owed something. But the fish don’t know shit about Karma or paying dues or risk-reward. They’re either there or not. They were not. But Mr. Murray caught a fluke.

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INTERVIEW: John Papciak, Montauk Wetsuiter

Posted on September 27th, 2011

Even a boat guy like me realizes that if you fish in the Northeast, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t read Surfcaster’s J0urnal. John Papciak is the magazine’s fly guru, and a proponent of one of the most hardcore ways there is to fish for striped bass: Swimming out to the rocks. He gives a great account of it in the most recent issue called “Confessions of a Wetsuiter.” Intrigued, I decided to email him a few questions, just because it’s so intense and maybe, well, borderline insane? Here’s the interview: Swimming out to the far rocks at night seems like an extreme way to fly fish. What made you decide to try it? There is whole contingent in Montauk (surfcasters) who…

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