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 as swift as a high-mountain trout stream.
That day last week reminded me of an old story about an impassioned fisherman who, standing at the pearly gates, is asked by St. Peter how he’d like to spend his days. The fisherman quickly responds, “I’d like to be the only fisherman on a beautiful, sunny bank, casting at big rising fish.” St. Peter takes him to a beautiful sunlit bank where numerous huge fish are feeding. On his first cast he hooks the fish of a lifetime. The same thing happens on the next two dozen casts. Taking a much-needed breather, he turns to St. Peter and says, “I never thought heaven would be so wonderful!”
Looking the jubilant fisherman squarely in the eye, St. Peter replies, “Heaven? Who said you are in heaven?”
The real joy of fishing is not the catching but the entire ethos of the sport — the hunting, the planning, the painfully acquired knowledge, and even the many days and nights of fruitless effort. Fishing’s equation has equal parts of failure and success.
This particular day on the Herring River felt a lot like being in not-really-heaven. The sun was out, the sky above the vista framed by the bluffs of Wellfleet’s Great Island and the sinuous dunes of the Gut was filled with soaring ospreys, cawing seagulls, and the sharp screeches of the season’s first terns. About every tenth cast I hooked a hungry striper feeding on schools of herring that rose all around.
But these weren’t the ordinary schoolie-size bass of previous years. By the standards of just two years ago, these were enormous stripers, each fish well above the narrow 28-to-31-inch slot for “keeper” bass. In 90 minutes, I caught more than a dozen of them, each one seemingly larger than the last. They averaged 35 inches, with the largest measuring 41 inches from snout to tail.
As I went through the motions of catching and releasing one bass after another, I couldn’t shake a sense of despair that lurked just beneath my joy. I was fishing as usual with a seven-foot rod and reel loaded with 20-pound test fishing line — gear my grandfather would have used for catching lake perch and trout. The stripers were so large and my gear so light that it took a long time to bring in each fish. One battle lasted for 10 minutes as the bass used the strong current to peel out 30 or 50 yards of line on each of her myriad runs. Many of the fish were so tired when I brought them in that I had to hold them head-first in the moving tide before they regained enough strength to swim out of my hands.
This season, I realized, releasing a fish is not about benefitting a future fisherman. Instead, it’s a reflection of my fear for the future of the species. Not that I’m worried about the total disappearance of striped bass. Given the human trajectory, it’s more likely mankind will disappear before the bass do. But I have to wonder if I’ll see another soul-satisfying bass run in my lifetime.
My doubts are rooted in the available scientific data. The extraordinary striper breeding season eight years ago has resulted in successive boom runs of larger and larger fish. The last seven year-classes of bass, however, have been way, way below what’s necessary to sustain the population.
While recreational fishermen bemoan the fact that their commercial counterparts can keep much larger fish (and 15 per day to their one-fish limit), 80 percent of striper mortality is due to recreational fishing. There’s some hope that new fishing gear rules, such as strict use of circle hooks in bait fishing, will decrease striper mortality. But studies show that even when they’re caught with single barbless hooks, 10 percent of released fish still die.
Some of the reasons behind the ongoing collapse are likely related to climate — rising water temperatures, changing weather patterns, rising ocean acidity and sea levels. But while considering climate change is never enjoyable, fishing always is. So, while intellectually I understand the threat of climate change, the potential loss of stripers promotes a deeper, more personal sense of loss and guilt.
What’s a fisherman supposed to do? Stop fishing entirely or enjoy what remains before it’s gone? We humans look for compromises — like buying electric vehicles while continuing to eat beef and travel on jets.
I know that Mother Nature has her ways. I recall an October day in the late 1970s when stripers had almost disappeared entirely. My pal George Shafnacker and I were flounder fishing off Provincetown when we saw big fish breaking nearby. Assuming they were bluefish, we raced over and immediately hooked up. To our amazement, we brought two very large bass to the rail. In that moment, we both decided to release the bass, pledging to each other to stop killing stripers until they rebounded. We returned to flounder fishing. Within a decade, the stripers were at historic highs.
My karma-building ritual has always been to release the first keeper of the year. It’s my way of honoring the fish, a personal declaration of responsibility to its continued existence.
Here’s what I’m wondering now: If we were all to abstain from killing any stripers at all, that might buy Mother Nature the time she needs to achieve another prolific spawning season. It might also help me rebuild my badly depleted karma account. Maybe then, when I meet St. Peter, he will find me a beautiful place, full of big fish, but make the fishing just as challenging and unpredictable as it is at its best.
