In beach fishing, it’s a sure bet every day will bring some unexpected moment. They happen when you see something unusual, like a great white attacking a seal or whales close to shore. But sometimes the surprises are internal. Like when you realize that impatience and frustration, though frequently uncomfortable emotions, are natural aspects of beach fishing.
My graduate school psychology professor, who was also a frequent fishing companion, held that these two emotions actually define the sport. His theory was that one’s passion for fishing is determined by the inverse relationship between catching and casting: the harder it is to catch a fish, he said, the more pleasure you get when it actually happens.
I think of his formula often, especially when after weeks of spectacular striper fishing you fall into a lull or, as the baseball fan in me calls it, a fishing slump. When I’m putting in the time, walking the beach, making casts while scanning the horizon for birds and eyeballing the water for signs of bait, I find courage in conjuring up memories of unexpected peak moments that materialized seemingly out of nowhere to break a fishless streak.
A favorite memory is of a day I spent halfway between Longnook Beach and Ballston. It came during a difficult time in my life. I had just graduated from college and was helping my sister and brother-in-law out of a jam when I was entrapped by state police and postal authorities into accepting delivery of a package that I soon learned contained 30 pounds of hashish. Out on bail, unable to leave the state while I awaited trial, I felt trapped and depressed. “Sure, Jim, of course you are innocent,” even good friends were saying.
I had just arrived on the Cape and was looking for a job and a place to crash for the summer. It was a beautiful, hot early afternoon in July. The sea was flat and lifeless, and I wondered if I should leave the baking beach where my overheated surfboard lay next to my useless fishing rod. But sitting in the tent I’d pitched on my pal Terry Kahn’s South Pamet lawn seemed a far less attractive option than fishing — even if I wasn’t going to catch anything.
Before long, a small aluminum skiff skidded past heading south. I watched, hoping the fisherman at the helm would stop. That would mean somebody, at least, was catching a striper. He ran past and then, much to my delight, slowed down over some shallow sand bars, angling shoreward a half mile down the beach. My adrenaline began to surge when the fisherman brought his boat to a halt and tossed an anchor into the shallows.
Hope soaring, I picked up my lure bag, wrenched the rod from the sand and began sprinting down the beach. Numerous fast-moving fishing blitzes had taught me that speed is essential to success. As I flew, I unloosed my popper, tested my reel drag, and flipped the bail to be ready to cast the instant I was in range of the fish.
Just before reaching the boat, I ran up onto a high berm to get a clearer view of what was happening and where I needed to go. What I saw was not a fisherman in action. Instead, the guy was lying back against the tilted top of his outboard engine, binoculars in hand, staring fixedly at a point well up on the beach.
Following the angle of his gaze, I saw what had captured his attention: two nude women, sunbathing discreetly at the foot of the dunes. I turned to begin the walk back to Longnook. But something made me stop. Since I was this far down the beach, shouldn’t I at least make a cast? I made two, each resulting in an enormous splash in the clear green water at the end of my line and a beautiful 25-pound striper lying at my feet.
My screaming reel promptly woke the fisherman from his prurient reverie. I watched with glee as he frantically pulled his anchor and dropped his engine to get into the action. But by then the fish had moved on.
While landing my second bass, I realized I had also caught the sunbathers’ attention. With a big smile on her face, one of them approached me and asked, “What are you going to do with these fish?” A few seconds passed before I could answer. What was I going to do with all this striper meat, living as I was, in a borrowed tent with neither a stove nor a grill?
“How about I give you one?” I offered, to which she responded she had no idea how to clean or cook such a big fish. “I’ll clean and cook it,” I offered, “as long as you supply the wine.” When she said yes, I felt that my life, like my fishing, had finally turned a corner.
