Let's Do That Again
by Mark Sanner
I was really apprehensive about this fishing trip.
Four close, long-time friends from the midwest were coming to visit for their first taste of salt water fishing on Long Island Sound. It was sure to be an animal-grunting, muscle-flexing, juvenile-humor, male-bonding reunion. There was only one small problem: I hadn't landed a decent fish in more than a month.
It was now mid-August, and although May and June had seen fantastic bass fishing, the record hot weather we'd suffered throughout July had sent water temperatures soaring into the mid-70's. The bass were sulking who-knows-where and there were only scattered reports of blues beginning their pre-fall marauding. Steve, Paul, Pete, and Thom had a little experience with freshwater fishing, but I was the only avid angler and the only one with saltwater experience. I had three days in which to put these guys on real fish or face the ridicule of the clan for the rest of my natural life, possibly even longer.
I needed a plan.
In the week preceding the invasion, I made reconnaissance missions, studied the tide charts, updated the weather forecasts, talked to friends, and combed the weekly fishing reports.
A plan emerged, and a backup plan, and a contingency plan and a backup for the backup, just in case. In case the fish weren't biting, in case the weather turned bad, in case all four landlubbers got seasick. I stockpiled ordinance – lures, sinkers, line, leader, terminal tackle – expecting a high casualty rate at the hands of the rookies.
With four people traveling long distances by three different routes, the chances of a unforeseen delay was high.
"The tides wait for no man ... and neither do I when it comes to fishing," was my stern motivational position.
The full crew assembled on time and on schedule for the first time at the dock on Thursday morning. It wasn't much, but I was encouraged at this early stage of the mission that we had transportation and weather, two major variables, working in our favor.
We loaded the gear and readied the boat for departure. I went over the safety equipment and the house rules. There are few rules on my boat, but you better remember them.
Rule #1: I am the one and only Captain and Master of this vessel.
Rule #2: No cell phones.
It's OK to bring it along (I carry a cell phone as a backup for the VHF), but it better be turned off. I don't want to hear calls from wives, kids, girlfriends, and especially work when we're on the water. Violation of this rule is punishable by immediate dispatch of the offending hardware to the inky deep. Consider yourselves warned.
"Sir, yes, sir, Captain Bligh, sir," Steve quipped sarcastically.
"Captain Bligh was a pansy," I replied. And I meant it.
We cast off and put the first part of the plan in motion. Initiating this novice crew with fluke fishing on flat, sandy bottom would be a relatively painless introduction to the fishing we'd be doing for the next three days and help them learn to bounce sinkers off the bottom without dragging and snagging. In addition, I wanted to orient the crew with a tour of the eastern Sound and instill a sense that we were on an adventure. I chose a spot on the south side of Fisher's Island, well-known fluke territory, and about a 45 minute ride from our home port in Niantic.
We arrived at our first destination near Barley Field Cove late in the morning with the flood tide just starting to move, bright sunny skies and a 10-15 mph SW breeze. We baited up the bucktail teaser and spinner rigs with strips cut from frozen squid, clipped on 4 oz. sinkers and we were fishing. Starting in 60 feet of water, I expected the tide and wind to take us mostly west and little north, slowly moving us through a range of gradually shallower depths, continuing a pattern westward along the shoreline until we found fish.
The first drift took us straight north into too shallow water.
We picked up the rigs and went around again, adjusting starting our point a little to the west, and changing to 6 oz. sinkers. On the second drift, everything was going fine when I heard a commotion from Pete at the port quarter. Snagged already, I wondered? Nope, bottom doesn't usually shake the rod tip like that. A few minutes later, we netted the first fluke of the day, an 18" keeper, no less. High fives all around, snap a quick photo or two, fish in the box.
The first fish of the trip, an 18” Fishers Island fluke.
"Let's do that again," I chimed, and the crew hopped to their stations.
We blanketed the area, using the chart plotting GPS, fish finder and landmarks to minimize the positioning guesswork. As the tide picked up, our drifts gained more of a westerly component, we compensated on each successive pass to keep us near our hot spot du jour and increased to 8 oz. sinkers. Over a two hour period, we boated a dozen and put four 18-20" fluke in the box. We didn't have any doormats, but I was relieved to find fish quickly and very pleased with the three-to-one keeper-to-short ratio.
Amazing. The plan was actually working.
Not only that, but the rookies had picked up the bottom bouncing technique quickly and only lost two rigs when the skipper put them on a drift too close to a pair of lobster pots. We could have stayed on the fluke all afternoon, but the crew was ready for a change.
We made a short run west past Race Point, past Valiant Rock and pulled up in the middle of The Race. My scouting four days earlier had produced a bunch of blues here on an afternoon ebb tide. We were on a flood tide now, but it was a nice day, the crew was flush with success, and still fresh. Chances were good we'd be able to find a few small blues.
We pulled out the heavy artillery: stiff boat rods and tough reels loaded with 35 lb. super braid, three-way swivels, bucktails, pork rind and 16 oz. sinkers (see "A Primer for Drift Fishing The Race", On The Water, October 2002). There wasn't much of a rip by Race standards, only about 2 foot standing waves, and the rigs went over the side into 95 feet of water. Unlike the fluke fishing where we had four lines in the water at all times, I decided to take turns here and only have two lines working. Things can get hairy in a hurry at The Race if someone snags bottom or hooks an aggressive bluefish.
Now there's a redundant phrase, eh? Aggressive bluefish. Have you ever seen a blue that wasn't aggressive?
"See, my teeth are bigger than his!"
The same SW wind was now working in concert with the tide and we were able to make the first couple drifts without incident, also no fish. We worked a repeating pattern, and the modest conditions that day made longer-than-usual drifts possible starting in deep water, moving up the bank onto the flats, and continuing into the rip. Until we found at least one fish, I wanted to cover a lot of ground and a variety of depths.
One of the crew snagged bottom and we had to break it off, losing the whole rig but recovering nearly all the line.
"Don't worry," I said reassuringly. "We have lots more tackle and this is part of fishing The Race. If you're not losing rigs from time to time, you're not down there where the fish are."
I pulled out the reserve rod (we had three identical rigs), handed it to the next man and went to work retying a new three-way and bucktail on the other. As I finished the knots on the three-way and set the rod in a holder, we crossed into the rip. I watched the lines as Steve and Paul at the transom constantly checked the depth as I'd taught them, working to keep the bait within five feet of the bottom.
Suddenly, Steve's rod bowed hard. I reached over and felt the rod with my fingers as Steve tightened his grip, eyes bulged, "Oooooohhhh, man!"
"That's a fish, Steve. Bring up your line fast, Paul, so they don't tangle." With more experienced anglers, I would have left the second line in the water. These guys were doing well with this totally foreign fishing style, but I didn't want to tempt fate.
I coached Steve on how to pump the rod, picking up line on the down stroke without giving the fish any slack. Keeping a tight line is particularly important on my boat because almost all of my Race bucktails are barbless. I release nearly all the fish I catch, and barbless makes this a lot faster and easier on me and the fish, especially when it comes to bluefish.
Moments later, we were bringing Steve's first bluefish along side, a healthy 24-incher. I don't like using a net with blues because they never stop fighting, even when they're in the fish box, and a net just creates a bigger, tangled mess on the deck. With blues this size, I put on a filet glove and grab it by the tail. First things first, though.
Fishing The Race can be hard work ...
... but frequently returns rewards such as this 32", 8 lb. bluefish.
"Rule #3: Grab the sinker, Steve." With a blue thrashing about beside the boat, the 16 oz. bank sinker was whipping around near my head.
"If you thought I was cranky before, wait til you see me after I've been bonked by that sinker," I barked.
Steve grabbed the sinker, I wound the 40 lb. fluorocarbon leader around my free hand, and lifted the fish out of the water. The crew enjoyed the show immensely as the well-hooked blue tried to simultaneously eat the bait, bite me and shake free while I jabbed at it's whipping, spinning tail with my gloved hand. Succeeding, I let go of the leader and held the fish head down over the water, grabbed the needle nose pliers from the holster at my belt, and carefully gripped the shank of the hook. With a quick, firm twist of the wrist, the bucktail was free. After photos for the folks back home, the bluefish was free as well.
High fives, grunting and attaboys all around.
"Let's do that again," I ordered, and the crew enthusiastically racked the tackle and found handholds as I refired the throaty two-stroke.
We landed four more blues in the next hour, shortening the drift to spend more time where the fish seemed to be concentrated that day, in the rip. It didn't seem to matter much where we were along that line, as long as we crossed into the rip. Many days the rip at The Race builds to four foot waves and I won't get anywhere near it, fish or not.
We began to lose the tide and the afternoon shadows grew, and we called it a day. The pressure was off and I was a lot more confident about finding more fish tomorrow. We made ready for the cross-Sound run home, got up on plane, wind in our faces, life was good.
Suddenly, we hit a wave that I didn't see coming and the bow lurched skyward, slamming us hard into the next, followed by a huge BA-BOOM on the deck behind me.
"WHAT THE?!?!?", we turned in unison to see Paul's bulk sprawled on the deck.
"Are you alright?!?!"
Paul, a 6'1"-300-pounder of a man, rose slowly and a little painfully, checking for damage, "Yeah, I guess. One minute I was sitting there minding my own business and the next minute I was airborne." Paul had been sitting on the integrated live well of the Euro transom.
"Are you sure you're OK?"
"Yeah."
"Great. Does anyone have a video camera? Let's do that again so we can get it on tape. We can make some money with this," I deadpanned.
Guffaw, guffaw, argh, argh. Four letter words from Paul.
I roused the crew at 5:30 AM the next morning for the next phase of the plan. We had an opportunity to experience The Race at it's best, and didn't want to be late. High tide was at 6:30 AM giving us a morning-long ebb tide and the forecast called for high skies, warm temps and a light SW breeze. Ebb tides are often more productive than flood tides at The Race, and we'd done well on yesterday afternoon's flood.
I brought the boat into position on the far western end of The Race, several other boats were already there, and a few were charters I recognized. A yellow bucktail with white pork and a chartreuse bucktail with yellow pork went into the water. Nothing on the first drift, around we went for another try, again using the chart plotting GPS and fish finder to fine tune our starting position in relation to the rip.
Pete and Thom were on the rods this time, working the lines as before, keeping the bait low, feeling the sinker bounce bottom and bringing it up two or three cranks. I was really impressed with the way these guys had picked up the technique, although Pete, the southpaw, sometimes used an odd over-the-reel-with-the-left-hand cranking style on my right-handed reels. It seemed to work for him, though, so I didn't mess with it, preferring instead to simply point out his mutant form.
BANG! Down went one rod tip. BANG! Down went the other.
"Damn, a double already? I was just getting comfortable and you're making me work," I complained. Rule #4: No whining, except by the captain.
The action continued, hot and heavy for more than an hour, picking up blues on every drift. Pete got the biggest blue of the day at 32" (about 8 lbs.), a pretty respectable fish for mid-August. We also landed a few small bass in the 24-27" range. We had a regular assembly line going with three men taking turns on two lines (Thom had neglected to take his Dramamine and had opted for chum duty), and I retied rigs as blues chewed up the leaders and rocks snagged the sinkers. The crew started to moan about how hard it was to reel in all these fish, and we reviewed Rule #4.
Approaching mid-tide, the blitz diminished as we struggled to keep the bait near the bottom. There was only one thing to do, increase the weight, and we went all the way up to 28 oz. (a 12 oz. drail plus a 16 oz. bank sinker). Using this much weight was physically demanding, but it worked and put a few more fish in the boat. By mid-tide, we were zipping along at 4.5 mph according to my GPS and the bite had stopped. I moved our drifts eastward toward Valiant Rock, searching for slower water and active fish.
"We've got a pretty fast tide going right now," I reported, "and we'll just have to tough it out for a while until it slacks off. When the current gets this strong the fish often hunker down and stop biting."
We searched and probed the reef for an hour and a half, unable to hook up. Gradually, however, the speed of the tide subsided and we maneuvered our drifts back to the deeper western flats. The crew was still power lifting 28 oz. sinkers, but we couldn't find the fish again. Where had they gone, I wondered to myself.
"Let's try something a little different," I said. "Sometimes the fish move off the flats and hang out on the deeper slope."
Fishing The Race requires heavy weights.
I steered the boat a few hundred yards farther uptide than I had all morning, carefully watching the depth on the fish finder. We'd been working in less than 100 feet so far, and now it was time for the long bomb. I cut the engine and settled the boat in 180 feet.
"OK, let 'em go boys," I said. "We're kinda deep right now but the bottom comes up pretty fast. Be ready for it."
The spools hissed as the rigs dropped through the deep water. Wait, wait, wait. Thunk. Click the lever. Crank, crank, BANG.
"Fish on!" We were in 160 feet of water.
Moments later, another feisty 30" blue came over the side and was released with a scar in his lip and a story to tell.
"You'll grant me three wishes if I do WHAT?"
"Let's do that again," snapped the captain.
This time I brought the boat even farther uptide, coasting to a stop in 225 feet of water near the base of the underwater hill. The crest of the hill was about 100 feet down and it looked like the fish were holding somewhere the middle. Starting the drift deep gave the crew time to get the rigs down and set before we crossed into the bluefish zone.
"The bottom's coming up now, 185 feet," I reported to the rejuvenated crew.
BANG! "Fish on!" I hit the waypoint marker on the GPS, noting the depth at 160 feet. And so it went for another hour as we worked an area side to side on the upslope, hooking up on nearly every drift when we hit 160 feet.
We returned to port early that afternoon with the gratifying ache and fatigue that comes from wrestling and releasing 18 blues and 3 bass on beefy tackle and heavy sinkers from the deep, strong currents of The Race.
We rose early again the next morning, Saturday, for the last day of fishing. On the previous two days, we'd accomplished everything I'd hoped achieve and more. From a captain's perspective, it doesn't get much better. The one quarry we hadn't yet targeted were big bass. Night fishing is definitely the best time for big bass, but circumstances had kept us off the water at night. Nonetheless, the crew had had enough of the slam-bam Race fishing for now, and wanted to return to more leisurely angling.
I decided to roll the dice on a long shot. Everything had been going our way for two days, and I'm a strong believer in riding a lucky streak as long as it lasts. There were no indications that our streak had run out of steam.
After a short ride from the dock, we pulled up at Bartlett Reef, south of the distinctive rock pile and marker locally known as "The Spindle". We pulling out the medium weight rods and reels rigged with fish finder sliders, 6 oz. sinkers, swivels, six feet of 40 lb. fluorocarbon leader, and 5/0 circle hooks tipped with striper candy, live eels. It was 8:00 AM and the sun was already high above the horizon, hardly the best time to hunting stripers. Starting the drift in 65 feet, the gentle ebb tide took us up and over the rock strewn ridge. Over and over, moving the starting point for each drift farther south toward the red can then back, covering the submerged reef in a regular pattern. We snagged bottom a few times, broke off, and retied. It's all part of the game, and so it went on a beautifully bright morning on the water.
Thom, feeling better today with the aid of modern pharmacology, was quietly working his eel over the rocks and said little when his rod bent hard, pulling drag. Standing beside him, I gently gripped the rod above the cork handle and felt the distinctive thump, thump of a striper's broad tail.
Thom pumped and reeled when he could, grappled to hold on as the fish made another run. I coached him on keeping the line tight when the bass turned and swam toward the boat and tweaked the drag until the tension was just right. This was definitely a good fish, and I didn't want to lose it. After three strong runs, Thom finally had the upper hand and was gaining ground rapidly. Several minutes later, we got our first glimpse as the big bass rolled up near the boat.
"Holy cow!"
"It's huge!"
"What a monster!"
With Thom steering the bass toward the bow, I scooped it into our biggest landing net and hauled it over the gunwale. Working quickly, I slid the bass out of the net and onto the deck, flicked the hook out of the corner of its mouth, measured its length, snatched a spring scale from a nearby compartment, and lifted the trophy for all to admire. I passed the hefty beast to Thom, cameras flashed and I read the scale.
"Forty inches and 25 pounds!" I announced triumphantly, my heart pounding, "I love this stuff."
Argh, argh, attaboy, waytago, manoman, grunt, grunt.
That bass was the only fish we caught and released that morning, and was a great conclusion to an amazingly successful three day expedition. Only a week ago, I wasn't sure we'd be able to catch anything but porgies and hickory shad, and now it seemed as if we'd been part of a Hollywood script. The bonds of the clan were renewed and my standing was safe until next time. Later that evening, we marked the highlights of the week with an awards ceremony:
To Pete: Most Fish Caught and Best Fluke Ceviche
To Steve: Cutest Fish (5" black sea bass)
To Paul: Most Acrobatic Fall on His Ass with Greatest Comedic Content
To Thom: Biggest Fish (40", 25 lb. striped bass) and Best Chumming for Distance and Accuracy
To me: Best Fishing Guide and Orneriest Captain of the Week
Bartlett Reef gave up this 40", 25 lb. striper.
The captain demonstrates the proper technique for maximizing the weight of a fish.
My guests departed the next day and I settled in for a few hours of much needed recuperation. I relaxed on the sofa in the company of a friend, weaving the first versions of new fish tales.
"What did you guys talk about for four days?" she asked.
"We're guys. We don't talk," I grunted, "argh, argh."