People who've never fished wonder sometimes what the allure to fishing is; I wrote this awhile back on a day one summer where the memories of childhood fishing were crystal clear, for whatever reason (by the way, the fish in the story was 'confirmed' by Goose Hummock Shop & I won the Governor's Cup that year):
“The Pilgrims came, took corn from Corn Hill and "their deaths" from Cold Harbor, and went on to Plymouth. Fishing had its rise and fall.” Excerpt taken from description of Truro, found on Cape Cod Magazine website
It’s interesting to hear that fishing has had its fall in Truro. I understand the downward trend in reference to Truro being a true fishing town, as a business, but I don't think fishing will ever "fall" in this quiet Cape town. I’m thirty-three now, and from the age of four to twenty-two, living and fishing in Truro was my obsession for three months of the year. In the early 1970’s, it was Stripers off Ryder Beach or in the little outboard motorboat diligently piloted by my nose-in-the-air-for-the-smell-of-fish grandfather. Then the Blues moved in – actually it was argued the Striped Bass had moved out, as their population was affected by polluted waters in their off-Cape breeding grounds. Whatever the cause, my early fishing years were fraught with keeping my fingers and toes away from the jagged little razors Bluefish have for teeth.
As a kid, I was disappointed not to be catching Stripers, instead fighting the sinewy Blues. Sound crazy? Of course, I was a kid and, of course, I wanted to be catching what I’d heard everybody else used to catch. Then I learned to fish with surface plugs. And only on the surface. Casting your lure, whether from the beach or from a boat, and reeling that plug in as it dances and splashes its way back on the water’s surface. When the Bluefish unexpectedly lashed out at the hooked prize, my heart would leap with equal amounts of alarm, amazement, and anticipation. Once my grandfather realized I was hooked on fishing, the trolling out with the Fleet in the Bay stopped. As far as my family was concerned, trolling amounted to begging for fish. That wasn’t the way to catch fish, he’d say. No fun, no sport. No more Hootchies or Rapalas trolling around ‘til we hit a school some 30 feet below the surface – strictly the splashers on top (as a kid in the later 70’s, I couldn’t help but think of Blues as mini-sharks, striking at its floundering “victim”). We’d go out over the Hole, the Path, or the Choc’lit Drop (those of you that know the spots, good – those that don’t, well… good) – about a quarter mile offshore in the four bench outboard motorboat and we'd start casting. Everybody has their story of when they first learned patience and, well, that’s mine. We’d be out there tossing our plugs during heatwaves when the air was so still we could hear the beachgoers’ crossword puzzle debates. On gustier days, armed with the same stoic diligence, we’d be casting in wind blowing hard enough to turn a 35 foot cast into either a 65 footer or a 10 footer, depending on which side of the boat you were throwing. Watching the Blues pounce, splash and attack the lure as you reeled in was the reward of learning the lesson of patience. And those Stripers? Well, along about the late 70’s, the larger Striped Bass were starting to make an appearance off the Backshore.
Truro has a few oceanside, or backshore, beaches. Ballston, Long Nook, and Head of the Meadow were the only ones I knew of as a boy. Mainly just Ballston, because that was a straight drive west from our place at Ryder Beach. When my grandfather gleaned the knowledge that Stripers had been caught off the beach on the oceanside, the only question was which beach. Now, this kind of fishing was a little different; it was at night, off the beach, casting live eels baited on a single hook, flinging the lightweight lure through the oft-pounding surf. To keep dry in the surf, we wore waders. However, when you’re 11, men’s waders come up to your armpit if you’re lucky -- if you're not that tall, they engulf you and cannot be worn. With waves being a little unpredictable in the dark of night, let’s just say my waders’ effect seemed somehow contrary to their stated goal: water would be held in close to my body as I was splashed, rather than shielding me from the ocean’s onslaught. To me, the promise of a night of seemingly everlasting dampness was the grudging price of admission. For a couple of nights a week, we’d head out around 9:30 and get back about 1 in the morning. But there was nothing like The Night, the one great night.
As was usual, we locked the hubs (grandfather’s job), let some air out of the tires (my job), and after making our way onto the beach, pulled down aways, heading a little north, towards P-Town. Halting with a jerk (beach sand never lets you roll to a stop), my grandfather, his brother-in-law – my Uncle Henry, and I would pile out of the beach buggy (an old bleached yellow International Harvester Scout – I wish they still made them), and start the routine: They’d don the waders and spark up the cigars, pulling each leg on while deftly switching hands with from cigar to mouth to suspender to – puff – other hand to cigar to mouth to suspender – puff; I’d lie in the sand and dive each skinny leg into the fishing garb, a mental picture of someone sticking a twig in a rodholder always persisted, then roll over and fight my arms over the top of the waist section. The suspenders I’d have to crisscross a few times to achieve enough tension to hold the wide rubber waders on my somewhat bony little frame. Next we’d pull the rods out of the rodholders in front of the car’s grill, then approach the bucket tied to the center of the grill. This overgrown beach pail, half-full of seawater, would be teeming with live eels – our unwitting partners as the dusk turned to night. Next came the necessary evil – reaching in and enlisting a “volunteer” and somewhat indelicately placing them on the single hook on your line. There is no delicate way to describe where the hook is placed, but let’s just say the eel never sees the Striper coming. Fully armed, loaded and sufficiently geared up, you start casting… and casting. For variety you can walk up and down the beach in either direction, but in the dark, with all the realities of a goblin-swarmed imagination, twenty yards away from home base – the beach buggy – is as much change in scenery as I craved. Incidently, fishing, and especially casting, with live eels, at first glance, is a sisyphian enterprise. You see, you can’t just chuck your hook as hard as you can out into the ocean. This would rip the hook right out of the eel. Rather, you must loft the bait gently, yes – gently, out into the water. Whereas an angler could usually toss their lure 25 yards, they would now be fortunate to reach 25 feet. But this distance was just right for, once in the bait was in the water, all the angler need do is to reel the line in slowly, let the eel do all the work; while the fisherman knows the eel is a little fidgety due to the hook pervading its consciousness, the Striper sees a panicky prey. A note about casting and Stripers: Striped Bass are one of the best negotiators of the surf in all the ocean – thus, the feeble distance at which the cast is made is somewhat of an exclusive invitation to Stripers, as they are one of the only fish hearty enough to feed in the surf. Now, Stripers at this time, 1979, were rare indeed. Most nights we came home with wet pants, tired eyes, and hungry stomachs.
Back to The Night: after a couple of hours standing in the ocean, continually reminding myself that it was okay that I could barely lob my slimy, baited cohort any distance in the black sea, I trudged my drippy self back to the beach buggy for my big treat – taking a seat in the beach buggy and a can of grape soda. Looking back, it's hard to believe, but I looked forward to this can of cold purple nectar with the same anxious anticipation of a snow day during school. It wasn't to get away from fishing, it was the temporary warmth of the Scout and, I don't know, there just is something about grape soda. As I sat in the car that night, cooling my mouth and warming my toes, I could faintly discern the silhouettes of my grandfather and uncle against a half-moon sky; I'd always felt a tinge of guilt that I was sitting down drinking soda. Don't get me wrong, they took a break or two, but it seemed more justified to me for them to walk back to grab a cigar or a beer. It seemed more fishermanly. Well, on this evening, during my second, and last, grape drink, I heard my uncle shout something unintelligible, then heard my grandfather yell up to me that Uncle Henry had just hooked up and was fighting a fish. Of course, my suspicions had just been confirmed. Not only was I was taking my break at the wrong time, I had taken too long, and grape soda was not only not a true fisherman's drink, but I would never look at the enticing siren, known as grape soda, again. Running back down to the shoreline, sidling up as close as I dared to my uncle's sanctified location, I started lobbing my little helper into the froth -- the surf had definitely picked up. Since I was sure the greater the misery, the greater the reward, when the waves proceeded to drench me, this only affirmed my conviction that I was getting closer to my goal. I was straining to hear the conversation between my Uncle Henry and my grandfather. My uncle had just exclaimed what a good fight he was having when suddenly, silence. And then a rather descriptive curse -- the Striper had shook free.
After the curse, Uncle Henry simply resumed casting. While I continued my self-declared futile fishing efforts, I mused at how fast my grandfather and uncle had overcome the obvious despair they must feel over a lost Striper. Then I realized… they'd seen a Striper caught off the oceanside many times before. Twenty years before I was born they'd seen it. And they'd see it again. Just as I had somewhat mentally resolved how they could have overcome the Tragedy of the Lost Fish, it happened. Remember, all this time, I'd been casting. Well, as I slowly reeled the bait in, suddenly my rod tip became to quiver. I wasn't sure what was happening, because it was not one big jerk, or even a strong tug. It was as if the bait kept gaining and losing slight increments of weight. Maybe I’d hit a patch or seaweed… but then again, maybe not. So I was quiet. Quietest I'd ever been. This was the first time I could hear my heart beating in my ears. I focused insanely hard to maintain the same deliberate, slow, reeling pace. Then… boom! Wwhreeeee! Line flew off my reel as if my hook was on the back end of a car freed from holiday traffic at the Sagamore Bridge. I yelled to my grandfather and uncle. I yelled loud and hard, but to this day, I have no idea what I yelled. Suffice it to say, they both understood my message. Grampy was right by my side (did you think I actually called him 'grandfather'), not so much coaching as simply being there. Nodding assent. Looking back at the moment, it wasn't as if he wanted to make sure I landed this fish at any cost. I'm sure he didn't consciously think of it, but it was as if he sensed that this would be a far richer experience if I did it on my own, regardless of the outcome. I'd had plenty of battles with Blues in the Bay, but this was my first entrenched war with the Bass from the Beach. There was the back and forth of long runs, then me trying to make up ground by pumping and reeling. In the silence previous to the strike, I could hear the beating of my heart in my ears, but now in the clamor of battle, I could actually feel it pounding in my chest. Always in the back of my mind I thought that even if I did lose this one, at least I knew what it was like now. After about 20 minutes, I noticed my reel had almost all its line back on the spool. I knew it had to be close. Slowly, I started to shuffle backwards away from the water. I now cared a lot as to whether I landed this fish. I did not care what it felt like to fight one; I wanted to know what it was like to catch one. I formulated my plan of shuffling backwards, through the dunes if need be, to land this stubborn, valiant, foe. But that wasn't necessary. After backpedaling 10 yards, the line suddenly, at first ominously went slack. And then, there it was; a beautiful shiny, white-bellied Striper washed up with an incoming wave. As I quickly reeled in the slack, my grandfather pinned the Striper, grabbed it under the gills and hauled it up the beach. At first, I was discouraged he didn't allow me to haul my bounty up the shore's incline, but then, as I approached the catch, I understood. It was big.
This was a very big Striper. I scanned my memory banks of all the pictures I'd seen at our house, and then at our neighbor's house, and I was pretty sure I'd never seen a Striped Bass this big. Slowly, I moved my eyes from the fish to my grandfather. His eyes were still on the fish as he bent over to show me where it was hooked and to our amazement, the hook wasn't even in the flesh. It was curled around one of the white cartilage pieces, called rakers, from which the red gills stemmed. If I had even given a moments slack to the fish before he washed ashore, the hook surely would have jarred loose. As for the size, I had always imagined the picture of my first caught Striper would somehow show me holding the beast by the gills, perhaps supporting its belly with my other hand. To my absolute delight, that was not to be. This fish weighed 55 pounds – measuring 55 inches long and 36 inches around. I could only lift it partially from the ground (I never claimed to be a strong youngster). The only photos, as far as I was concerned, would have to be wide-angle, as I kneeled on the ground next to my first Striped Bass (okay, a regular angle sufficed). As I turned the flashlight, taken out the beach buggy, on this glory, it was a weird thing. At that point in my life, I had accomplished my one great goal. And I was lucky enough to realize it.
I’ve caught a lot of fish since then, and you know what? Not one Striper. Oh, I’ve been in ‘em, but I haven’t caught any. My friends, casting right next to me, have caught some. I just never hooked up with one. Strictly Blues in the Bay. I kinda like it that way, because that’s where Grampy and I did most of our fishing in Truro. Strictly with surface plugs, mind you.
(…and from which beach was the prize Striper caught? …I was instructed by my fishing partners to say Head of the Meadow… and we’ll just leave it at that.)
-Holt dedicates this article to his grandfather, Wallace "Shep" Shepardson.Many folks will remember Shep, as he was friends & co-owner of the tuna fishing boat 'Toja' with Doc Bradford, grandfather of Mac & Alex at Mac's Seafood in Wellfleet/Truro
