I wait all winter for the precious June afternoons when the wind and sun are at my back, and the tide is low and incoming. These are perfect conditions for […]
ON THE BEACH
A Cormorant Offers Some Fishing Advice
How I learned to love, or at least respect, that damn bird that stole my trout
On a balmy afternoon at the end of April, I spent a solitary hour casting from my favorite spot up the Herring River to see if any early bass had […]
FRESH BROOK: PART 2
The Sea-Run Trout’s Return to Wellfleet
Understanding a subspecies that starts in fresh water but needs access to the sea
In May 1840, a small group of sport fishermen set out from Newport, R.I. in search of sea-run brook trout. Traveling first by ferry, then by coach and horseback, and […]
FRESH BROOK HISTORY
The Sea-Run Brook Trout of Wellfleet
Along a stream where fishing flourished, stillness, and a chance for restoration
It’s hard to imagine what Wellfleet’s Fresh Brook — or Trout Brook, as it is labeled on some old maps — looked like a half millennium ago, when it was […]
ON THE BEACH
Searching for Solace on Gull Pond
Fly-casting as a cure for a case of ‘intolerance of uncertainty’
On a recent mid-November afternoon, I was the only person on the pond aside from a paddleboarder barely visible in the distance. A week after election day, it was sunny […]
ON THE BEACH
The Emotional Comfort of a Go-To Lure
Even scruffy and worn, favorite lures create the confidence necessary for fishing success
Halfway through the upswing of my cast, I heard a snap and watched my silvery popper fly lazily overhead and plop in the fast-moving water a few dozen yards in […]
ON THE BEACH
The Enduring Teachings of a Childhood Pond
Nature provides places to heal, but now it asks for our protection
We called it Spectacle Pond, but maybe that’s just a name we neighborhood kids made up. All I can find now on maps of Lexington is a tiny, roundish pond […]
ON THE BEACH
Why in Autumn an Explorer Returns to His Familiar Haunts
It’s not always the fishing an angler remembers most
A good friend of mine is convinced that humankind is composed of three distinct personalities: farmers, explorers, and seekers. According to her theory, exploration is part of each one’s purpose, […]
ON THE BEACH
The Secret of Tasty Blues
The art of the quick kill and bleeding brings out the best in bluefish and bonito
Everybody who owns a rod and reel enjoys catching bluefish. They are aggressive, hard-fighting, love to come close to shore, and will eagerly hit just about any lure cast their […]
ON THE BEACH
Learning to Read the Chop
On the back shore, a father’s lessons reveal the bounty under the ocean’s surface
On Father’s Day I pick the meat off a big lobster in honor of my father, who spent his winters dreaming about getting back to Provincetown and eating freshly cooked […]
ON THE BEACH
A Fisherman’s Luck
Skill is one thing, but how to explain the hits and hookups that happen on the very last cast?
Knowing a backshore beach’s structures — the deeps, shallows, and river-like troughs between the shore and the first sandbar — is as important to catching fish as knowing the tides, […]
ON THE BEACH
The Striper Fisherman’s Dilemma
Wrestling with joy and guilt as bass suffer a precipitous decline
It was the kind of afternoon a fisherman dreams about all winter — one spent wading in the spectacular beauty of the Herring River, casting surface lures into receding waters […]
ON THE BEACH
A New Old Favorite Fishing Spot
A tiny fly pattern reveals the bounty in a Wellfleet kettle pond
You would think that after 50 years of obsessive globe-trotting in search of new and better places to fish, the last place I’d find would be a pond in my […]
ON THE BEACH
A New Old Favorite Fishing Spot
A tiny fly pattern reveals the bounty in a Wellfleet kettle pond
You would think that after 50 years of obsessive globe-trotting in search of new and better places to fish, the last place I’d find would be a pond in my […]
ON THE MARSH
Of Settlers and Silt
How the invasive earthworm came to shape the Outer Cape’s landscape
The measured opening of the 115-year-old Herring River dike is front and center in a decades-long restoration project aimed at bringing back some of the Wellfleet estuary’s original tidal flow. […]
