The Stripers Are In
by WYMAN RICHARDSON, M.D.
1
MY FATHER claimed that he fished for striped bass in the Weweantic River off Buzzards Bay for twenty-five years before he caught one. This story I am sure lost nothing by repetition; and there are no details as to how often he fished the Weweantic. However, it is true that several years before he died in 1912, we began to catch a few nice bass in the river. Great fisherman that my father was, no catch gave him greater pleasure than a Weweantic striper.
I began to haunt the Nauset Marsh on Cape Cod in 1912. In 1924 my brother Edward arrived at the Farm House from Boston with a lemonwood rod and a reel equipped with a clutch and a free-running spool. His thought was that striped bass were coming back, and we should have some fun with them, as they did on the Jersey beaches.
In September, 1924, we began seriously to fish the beach. On the first trip with the new outfit, Edward started two fish, both of which got off; but he saw them flash silver through the curl of a wave. Then he hooked one. I braved the surf with a homemade gaff, a gadget we soon found to be unnecessary, and hauled in a huge barn-door skate. We tried again, and this time Edward landed a fine 8-pound bass. We all cheered, the first of our well-known “bass yells” which can be heard as far as Provincetown, when at last the fish was beached. We did not realize, at the time, that this fish marked the recrudescence of a sport which today brings many thousands of people to Cape Cod shores.
About two weeks later we struck it rich. There was a moderately heavy surf; the tide was ebbing through the inlet and the channel made close by the south point and out to the southeast. The incoming surf and outgoing ebb made an eddy at the peak of the beach, a spot that later came to be known as the “Aquarium.” On this occasion, taking turn and turn about with our one rod, we caught eight bass weighing, in the aggregate, 55 pounds. Incidentally, in all the following years, we never surpassed this record. Nor did we ever surpass the bass-eating record: 55 pounds of bass in one week!
The ever changing beach is never the same two days running, and in a week’s time can easily present an entirely different fishing proposition. We found, however, a general pattern. Starting at the Aquarium and going south, one came to a high bar that made well out to the southeast, with the inlet channel running just to the north. At the height of tide, with a moderate surf, fish could be caught right on top of this bar. To the south of it there was usually a wide, deep eddy, and fish often lay at the north end, just where the ebb swept over the bar. This came to be known as “Fish Hog Eddy” or “Fish Hog Point.” Still farther south, there would be another shoal; and here, not infrequently, many rocks would appear. Some years, there were so many rocks that fishing with our rig became impossible; other years, almost all the rocks would be buried in the sand. Farther along came the houses and the main public swimming beach at East Orleans.
For bait we used small whole eels, and the first requisite was to catch one. We spent many hours trying to spear them with eel and frog spears, but eventually we found that clam-baited minnow traps, set in one of the West Shore creeks, would usually produce eels of the required size. The next problem was to string them. A single hook, with three or four links of jack chain attached, could be threaded through the eel, so that the top link of chain lay just below the eel’s nose. A close tie was made over the nose, and a homemade conical sinker, with a hole through the center, passed over the line, to lie at the tie. If the tie was strongly made, the eel would be prevented from slipping down over the chain and hook. For it’s an old adage that “a whirling eel gathers no bass.” This was a dirty job; but after a little practice we became quite proficient.
It is human nature to think that the best things are where you are not. The trout fisherman is always wishing he were on the other bank; and the surf-caster thinks he must cast far offshore. It is true that he thus may cover more water, but only exceptionally does it help him; for bass, if inclined to feed, are very likely to come right up on the shelf. On the whole, we did better than most of our competitors, almost all of whom used some form of metal bait.
There was one nice-looking young man whom we frequently encountered on the beach. He had a beautiful overhand cast, and it was a delight to see his jig sail off into space, almost out of sight. We called him “the blond slugger.” He used to catch a lot of bass and may well have taken more fish off that beach than anyone else. However, we attributed his success rather more to his observance of Rule 1 and its corollary, Rule 2, than to his casting ability. (Rule 1: Be there when the fish are biting. Rule 2: He catches the most fish who does the most fishing.)
Some years ago, my children were attending the Unitarian Church in Chestnut Hill. They came home in breathless excitement. The minister was the blond slugger! The Reverend Mr. Gessner has a deserved reputation as a bass fisherman.
2
BY and large, we found the early ebb the most fruitful time to fish; and we probably caught most fish when the tide began to ebb strongly through the inlet, some two hours after it had turned on the beach. Bass are night feeders. If you wish to catch bass by daylight, you must fish when high water comes at morning and evening. I do not remember any of us taking a bass off the beach in the morning after full sunrise. The possible exception might occur during the late fall run.
Without a light, one necessarily must quit around “splash dark”; that is to say, when one can no longer see the bait hit the water. This is, however, the most likely I ime to land a fish. We started by carrying ordinary flashlights to help in freeing the inevitable backlash on our reels, and ended by using a headlight with belt-attached battery. With the latter, one can fish the darkest night; if a fish is hooked, the light is directed to rod tip and the course of his run determined. When the fish is brought near the shelf, he can be spotted in the light and lifted home on an appropriate wave.
Backlashes are inevitable, though by paying close attention to the vagaries of the breeze, they can largely be avoided. I have fished for four hours without a backlash; but this is a record to be spoken of in a hushed voice. Ordinarily, when fatigue begins, backlashes become frequent. Usually they can be freed; but I had one which I stubbornly spent a week in undoing. Of course, I could have dismantled t he reel and easily undone the thing; but having quit fishing, I was interested to see if it could be undone without removing the spool. A safety pin, always attached to one’s shirt, or elsewhere, is indispensable for undoing backlashes. I used to feel diffident about my prominently displayed safety pin, thinking that the connoisseur would say to himself, “Well, here’s a dub”; nevertheless, I clung to it, for, after all, the proof of the fishing is in the eating of bass for dinner.
As the years went by, we did more and more night fishing, although landing a bass by daylight is far more satisfying and exciting than to do so ad night. On an ordinary cloudless night, without a moon, one can see a good deal, once one’s eyes have become accommodated; but it should be remembered that frequent match flaring, or flashlighting, will greatly disturb such accommodation, and that it may take fifteen minutes to restore it. It is exciting to come to the rising, wade cautiously, bare-legged, into the wash, carefully wet one’s line by ever lengthening casts, until a full cast can be made without a thumb burn. One can get the feel of the sea as it heaves back and forth; and one can see one’s bait against the sky, to determine whether or not it is fouled. But one cannot very well tell about the runs and the eddies. Consequently, we frequently made a daylight survey of the area, and decided where and when to fish various places.
It is exciting to hook a fish at night. Quickly, two thumbs put pressure on the spool — not too much, for we believe in letting a fish run. But soon it becomes apparent that we do not know the direction of the run. One hand gropes for the battery switch, the other holds the rod and thumbs at the same time. The headlight goes on, the line is seen to be dragging to the south. Patiently we wait, exert more thumb pressure, and finally the fish stops. For a brief moment nothing happens, and then suddenly the line goes limp. Lost? Then reel, reel for dear life; the fish is making a dead run inshore. If we are fortunate, and helped by the drag of the line, we catch up to him before he shakes off. Then with taut line we carefully move to the southward until we are about opposite the fish. He is still strong, and makes short runs offshore.
Our headlight now is turned toward the curling wave, and soon we see the umbrella-like dorsal fin and the green back with silvery reflections as the fish turns and twists. But keep the pressure on, allow no slack! Work down toward the breaking wave, still with a taut line. Suddenly, a weakening of the strain tells us that the next wave will bring him in. It’s a big wave. Back, back quickly, line taut, back up to the rising. Gradually the wave recedes, and there is our bass, 12 pounds of him, lying on the sand. Grab him with one thumb in his mouth, firmly holding the lower jaw. If you slip a finger under the gill covert, you will get a painful spine cut in so doing. Anyway, get him up out of reach of the sea; and never, never wash him until he is in the kitchen sink.
I do not advise fishing on a black night, a really black night. The blackest of all are nights of thick fog. You leave the car, after a precarious six-mile drive, on the bluff and stumble down the quarter-mile sandy path to the beach, feeling your way gingerly, with bare feet noting sharp-pointed beach grass at the path edges. The roar of the surf grows louder, and suddenly you find yourself dropping off the shelf into the wash. This must be Fish Hog Eddy, you think. You keep well back, not being able to judge the thrust of the next wave, and reluctantly work to the north. You can see nothing, nothing at all except a vague whiteness near your feet. And incessantly the surf surges and retreats, now loudly roaring, now lisping; banging with gunshot suddenness one minute, the next filling the air with rushing sound. Finally, you stand at the peak of the bar, at high water. It looks all right, but then the first of three big waves breaks around your knees; the second, in spite of your backing up, wets your shorts; and the third thumps your belly. It’s no good here, you say, and you work back to the south. Now the sea begins to talk. “Burr!” it says. And then, “Whitch!” And later, “Friends, ALL OUT, backlash, tea party, rumble, bumble, lapse, wish, JUMP! STUMP! Broil steaks; boil and broil; LOOK OUT!”
About this time, your casting becomes erratic and your head is half the time turned over your shoulder. Suddenly the surf calls your name sharply: “WYMAN!” Quickly you reel in, stumble back over the path, and feel your way home through the fog to the Farm House. Here, after drying off in front of a small fire, you wonder at your own lack of courage. But just the same, leave the beach alone on a really dark night, whether it be fog or rain.
On the other hand, you can fish the beach on a full moon with almost the same satisfaction as in daylight. With a bright full moon, you can see your bait hit the water, and if fortunate enough to hook a fish, you can often play him without using your light.
I remember most vividly one clear night at full moon. We arrived at sunset, with the tide at two hours’ flood. We made headquarters on a smalt beach-grass rise opposite Fish Hog Eddy, where we deposited our basket containing extra clothing, extra reels and equipment, and a snack to eat. It was a beautiful evening, with an orange moon rising out of a sea turbulent in spite of a fresh southwest breeze, and with the great beach stretching north and south to infinity. Well to the north, Nauset Light blinked somewhat ineffectually into the moon’s brightness. We fished here and there without excitement, rested a bit in front of a beach fire, and ate a bit.
At high water, about eleven o’clock, I worked south to the bar above Fish Hog Eddy. I had previously noted a run inside this bar and figured the heavy surf rolling over it would run off to the north. I had made only two or three casts when, just as my eel came over the bar into the run, a heavy fish grabbed it. He ran straight offshore. After he had taken off about 100 yards of line I began to worry and put the pressure on. He stopped and then came back, straight in. It. seemed like hours of frantic reeling before I caught up with him at the shelf; and my feeling of relief that he was still hooked was almost shattering. He made several more runs, but I made it difficult for him. He hung off the curl of the breakers for a long while, but at last the strain wais too much for him and he came up docilely on the wash of a wave. He looked magnificent as he lay on the beach, and I felt sorry for him. I lugged him to headquarters, however, and came back to try again.
On my first cast, I hooked another that felt and acted exactly the same. He ran out 100 yards or more of line; I stopped him. And then I began to wonder what we’d do with 50-odd pounds of fish in the fishbox. At this point, like his predecessor, he ran straight inshore. I never caught up with him. He must have dropped the hook at the shelf, for I did not feel any drag until then, when I ruefully reeled in a bedraggled eel and resolved never again to worry about the fishbox.
My fish weighed 24 pounds, my biggest. When I cleaned him, I found twelve spike mackerel in his stomach, which must have increased his weight by at least one pound. Except for my brother Harry’s 28½-pounder, this is the biggest fish we have caught. Some day, we hope to hook into a monster, say 75 pounds or more, remembering that one of 108 pounds was caught on a hand line off this beach many years ago. But such fancies remain for the future.
3
MY MOST satisfying experience occurred late one September afternoon. My daughter and I arrived at the beach with the tide at a little less than half-flood. Already the sun at our backs was so low that the dune shadows reached the wet sand. As we reconnoitered from the rising, there was no sign of fish. I noted a large rock, prominent for the first time in several years, less than a full cast offshore, its peak showing through the crest of a moderate surf. The current sweeping to the north was making an observable eddy north of the rock.
“If I were a bass,” I said to Shar, “I should lie in the eddy behind that rock.”
The next question was how to get my eel through the eddy without fouling the rock. Fortunately I made a good cast well beyond and directly over the rock; then, without touching clutch or click, I clamped a thumb on the reel spool, and ran down the beach as fast as I could. I had taken perhaps fifteen steps when I was fetched up short by the solid pull of my line. Then zing! out it went. I managed to set the click and felt better; but it was some time before I stopped this fish’s run. I kept trying to work him to the north out of the rocks, and eventually was lucky enough to land him. He turned out to be a fine 14-pounder, a fighter beyond his weight.
Our best year was in 1932. We did not have to fish at night, and caught most of our fish in the late afternoon, at sunset, or at dawn. During this season, we even took bass over a very shoal bar in the white wash of outer breaking surf, at near low water. I remember introducing a friend one day to the fascination and annoyances of surf-casting. He tried a cast; had an immediate backlash which pulled his eel back into the wash at his feet. He had just freed his reel when his line started out at express rate; and shortly after, he landed a 12pound bass.
During our few weeks at the Farm House in 1932, we caught twenty-eight bass, weighing in the aggregate 292 pounds. These fish were caught on whole eels or, in some cases, on eelskins. (The skin of an eel, necessarily turned inside out by the process of skinning, is bright blue. When strung over a hook and chain, much as in stringing a whole eel, it makes a killing bait both for bass and bluefish, so tough that it takes even several bluefish to cut it up sufficiently to require restringing.) We got the feeling in 1932 that catching bass off the beach was easy once you developed the know-how. We spent many of the following years getting over this feeling.
One September evening in 1936, my wife and I were sitting on the Farm House platform. The sun had disappeared, leaving lovely soft sunset colors behind it. To the east a huge orange moon, squashed at top and bottom and bulging on the flanks, had just cleared the dunes. There was a light westerly air. Suddenly I smelled that strong, cucumber-like smell of feeding fish. Quickly, we walked the 100 yards to a spot that overlooked the Salt Pond. We saw what looked like large fish smashing the quiet water.
The next afternoon, having tied some white feathers to a snelled trout hook, I began casting with my 4-ounce fly rod. Before long, a fish roared out and started off with my line. Unfortunately it was old rotten line and it soon parted. The next morning I was out at dark, and after waiting in the boathouse for a thunderstorm to pass by, again began fly-casting, this time with about 40 yards of nine-thread Cuttyhunk salt-water line. It made casting quite difficult, but I was sure it would hold. There was a light northeast breeze, and occasional light rain. I would start at the windward shore and let the boat drift off. I soon had a rise, and was fast to a fighting fish. My excitement was intense as I finally brought him close to the net, for I still did not know what kind of fish he was. Great was my delight when he turned out to be a nice bass, about 2½ pounds. After this, I hooked a fish on almost every drift, and came home with four, weighing from 1½ to 3½ pounds. It was the most magnificent fishing I had ever had.
Our outfit has improved. I have a reel that carries about 20 yards of waxed line and 100 yards of fine silk backing. The casting line has to be washed in fresh water immediately after being used in salt water, else it will rot almost overnight. We fish mostly with bucktail streamers with a large hook. For the most part, we troll, always out of a canoe. One could fish for bass much as one docs for Atlantic salmon, if one had a couple of guides to hold the canoe over the riffles, while one cast ahead of the boat. We cover so much more water by trolling, and find so much else of interest by stirring around, that we rarely stop to fly-cast.
My wife has developed a technique to prevent reel overruns. She allows the reel handle to thump lightly in the palm of her hand. And under conditions where direct thumbing is impossible, absolute control is possible this way.
We find fish on shallow sand riffles, and runs over bars. One gets practiced in seeing fish under water; smelling them; noting their presence by the action of terns or the way herring gulls are sitting around. In the canoe, we run up close to many fish. One will see, on a calm day, a tiny ripple presumably caused by a minnow. We come to within six feet of it when, with a roar, ten or twelve bass boil away. The minnow was the second dorsal spine of a bass, just showing above the surface of the water. Such bass never bite; hence the adage, “A boiling bass never bites. ” Sometimes the fish will not show at all, but will unexpectedly strike. At other times, a feeding school will appear, and if we reach them in time, a strike is certain. A feeding bass makes a sucking sound which, in the distance, has the quality of a pistol shot. Not infrequently, a school of bass will harry bait without actually feeding. On such occasions, they will often roll almost clear of the water or flip their tails ‘way out. We call this “golloping” — “A golloping bass never bites” — and very disappointing it is.
Quiet is essential. Even rowing makes too much noise; and outboard motors will effectively stop all feeding. I have seen this on several occasions. Twice I have seen the whole area between the Beach Channel and Broad Creek alive with feeding bass. Each time, when a passing outboard came by, every fish stopped feeding. On one occasion, the fish started feeding again after an interval of twenty minutes; on the other, they quit for the day.
Some bass can be taken from outboards when the fish are in deep water, but I am convinced motorboats ruin shallow-water fishing.
Bass are an unpredictable fish. Just as you think you have their ways figured out, they will do something entirely different. Of one thing I am fairly certain: bass get sick of feeding on the same kind of bait. I have seen them suddenly stop feeding on pogies (menhaden), for instance, even though the marsh was full of them. At such times, they start feeding on shrimps, crabs, and worms; and then they are very hard to catch on any lure designed to resemble bait. It seems that, like the human infant if left to its own devices, bass feel an instinctive urge for some previously missing food element, and suddenly change their habits. Even the shape and taste of bass may change considerably in the course of a few weeks.
Most of our bass are females. Since I have been sexing them, all over 10 pounds, and over 90 per cent of the smaller fish, have been females. I do not know where the males keep themselves; but I suspect they remain in warmer waters. I have never seen a gravid bass, but they are said to spawn in May or June, when I have done little fishing. Certainly, we have never seen bass fry in this latitude; so that, if bass do spawn in those waters, it is unlikely that the eggs hatch.
Being a strictly coastal fish, bass arc easily netted out. It seems to me the greatest good to the greatest number requires strict control of netting. This must be on a Federal basis; or at least netting must be controlled in those waters where bass breed, especially in the Chesapeake Bay area, if we here are to have a plentiful supply.
I have written at some length of my friend “Roccus Lineatus” because I consider him the king of all fishes. Judging from the number of people who pursue him, many others must agree with this opinion. However, when any of the Farm House crew are approaching the boathouse at the mouth of the Salt Pond Creek, in the dark of night, with no fish in the stern of the canoe to drag it down a little, they can be heard muttering. Could one be close enough, he might make out some mumbled, oft-repeated words: “Those Consecrated Dunderheads!”
(An incidental note: If blucfish are around, they will bite off the tail and not get hooked, unless one puts the hook within two or three inches of the tail tip.)
With the whole eel rig we could, in a fair breeze, cast out almost 75 yards. I never could manage an onshore (easterly) wind if it had any heft. Even the jig fishermen always seemed to have much trouble with an easterly. The expert can determine exactly the proper weight, of jig for his rod, and may then use it constantly. We, too, would get the feel of an optimum weight, and would try to fit our sinkers to the size of our eels.