Contrails Across a Cloudless Sky

Location: facing eastward, Monmouth Beach, NJ (40.34°N, 73.99°W)

Air Temp/Speed: 38°F, 6mph W

Water Temp: 46.9°F

Surf Condition: 0ft. in height, 2^nd hr. of ebbing tide

Moon Phase: 85% waxing (visible) risen for 1hr.

Equipment: St. Croix Avid Surf ASRS100M2; Shimano Stradic 8000FI

(WHAMM!!)  Yessss, you’ve got to be kidding me!... I haven’t felt a strike like this in a looong time!  Ohhh, this is grrreat!  This has to be a Bass, the fish isn’t shaking its head madly like a Bluefish would be..    Just keep the line tight, you can’t lose this one!  Steady, steady…. maintain pressure, take in every inch of line you can… that-a-boy, pump, reel… pump, reel… Just concentrate, you’re doing great, she’s right here now, in a few feet of water swirling at the surface.. (mouth agape) WHOAA! loook at the SIZE of her!  (mouth remains agape, eyes now fixed wide-open at a 36” beached specimen)

Without hesitation, I systematically meld the cork-wrapped section of the ten-foot graphite rod to the underside of my right forearm for a desired sense of “oneness” with this finely-crafted tool, this essential accomplice of mine, a veritable slingshot, and by its own nature, an agile authenticator to Newton’s third law of motion (for every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction), demonstrated as such with every loaded cast it rockets from the shore, like an arrow fired from a drawn bow.  Right now, I am poised in a very special place as a surfcaster, bound in a memorable moment that I initiated, that this fish instinctively reacted to as a result, and together we are forming the related experience thereof.  I feel as though I’m held paralyzed by the time-warping peculiarities within the epicenter of a spiraling vortex delivering finned-fortune and pulsating-prosperity to my clamping palms.  It is now my duty to make battle, to reel her in and free her of the embedded lure she mistook as prey, earning for myself an incalculable satisfaction all the while. 

When clenching this slim companion in my hands, it’s as if my right-arm has tripled in length, offering me a vicarious expansion to my tactile faculty, enabling me to sense and envision each of the fish’s thrusting, side-to-side dashes in movement, her rigorously yanking head-shakes, and in my mind, allow me to “see” the fish without ever laying eyes upon her, accurately imagining the zigzag, lateral courses of her tugging, impaired movements underwater as she hovers in a listing position along the striated, sandy bottom, perceiving these sensations of her writhing struggle as they’re delivered directly to my body under the straining, carbon-composite equalizer I hold, that which acts as an enlivened, hyper-sensitive extension to my piqued nervous system.

This is how I’ve always chosen to fight my fish.  I realize it’s not the most efficient method, as arm and shoulder muscles unnecessarily strain harder and fatigue quicker than employing stress-free leverage, as when gripping the rod higher up its spine, but it’s an adaptation I prefer for attaining a richer experience of connection to a hooked fish that I immediately follow and conform to, finding it as natural as riding a bicycle again for the first time after years of abandonment have concealed from sight the underlying glossy luster of its frame with a caked accumulation of dust and the oncoming rush of air glancing off  my face being the testament to rediscovered freedoms found as I pedal forward on two wheels with the rejuvenation of a bird released from its cage.  This time however, I’m compelled to react otherwise.  A steep hill lies ahead.  The rod is being pulled away forcefully from my attached, white-knuckle grasp and backward-leaning body balanced upon anchored feet.  She is commanding respect from me, peeling out line to no end like that of a one-thousand-pound Black Marlin on twenty-pound-test monofilament. 

On this chilly evening, I have been granted front-row, V.I.P. standing-room to the sweet-sound of symphonious, stripping line quickly disappearing from my reel’s rapidly revolving spool.  Its engraved inscriptions, blurring beyond any legible discernment, appear as linear, parallel striations, as its unrelenting rotation vies to challenge the physical limits of the finely-tuned drag system’s compressed washers.  The friction these tiny discs produce is all I have in hopes of turning her head shore-bound before the deeply-buried backing to my braided line becomes visible.  This fish, somewhere out of sight below the bluish-gray waterline, is demonstrating her unremitting might to me with respondent, surging downward shakes of my rod.  I clearly feel that this heavy-weight contestant is anatomically endowed with broad shoulders and a wide, fanning tail pumping and broadsiding powerfully through her life-sustaining environ, the very surrounding water she swims within, now exhibiting to me an entirely unnatural, extreme behavior of sorts, in that a survival instinct to escape, to regain her sense of free-will, has manifested from an unbridled ambition to unhook herself, urging to break-free from this imposturous plastic-ploy lodged into her mandible.  The resulting engagement in a tug-of-war with me, a veritable plea for her unrestrained freedom, her deeply-ingrained desire to continue living, yields this undertaking I know as fishing.  I have met with the likes of fish this size before, so judiciously, I prepare for a more disciplined, calculated approach to induce submission of this linesided-leviathan. 

From my perspective, the straining endurance and yanking ferocity of her runaway struggle is what makes this a fight.  Understandably, her evolutionary conditioning, her biologically-programmed fight-or-flight behavioral response, her very determination to live, initiates immediately with the unstoppable fury like that of a boulder tumbling down a mountain.  She will not stop swimming away from this shore-bound, pulling force until her uninhibited sense of freedom is regained.  In the meantime, as the man dressed in waders, as the fisherman I chose be on this evening, I alone act as the sole benefactor of this primitive entanglement, but unbeknownst to her, she is fortunate enough to be in such a compromising situation with a man who values a continued existence of her life immensely, more so than she is ever capable of cognitively weighing as a cold-blooded, aquatic member of a lower-level life-form than myself.     

She will fatigue eventually. For me to fully-command the reins of this engagement before she exhausts herself, I’m forced instead to utilize full-leverage by selectively seating the rod butt on the inside on my pelvis, tightly grasping the backbone of the rod higher above the singing reel in order to best prevent premature muscle fatigue in my arm.  If this battle must be a marathon of endurance, I will pace myself, knowing from experience that brains trump brawn during any long-distance race against fish tails.  Steady, continual pressure on a fish behaving like a runaway freight train will always result in triumph for the angler, sans any tackle failure or cunning maneuvers by a fish near structure, or worse, sudden maneuvering or rolling in such a manner as to agonizingly free a barbless, or simply poor, hook-set.  The resulting dead line, once an electrified, taut piano wire of hammering exhilaration becomes nothing more than a lifeless, limp tease, a sudden, blind-sided black-eye to the face, and a painfully-sharp, false-mark of victory stabbing at an otherwise invincible, high-flying, adrenaline-fueled episode feeding a starved manhood rumbling from an evolutionary, primal-past as hunter, becomes this vacuous void infecting the cavity of the fisherman’s chest. 

This fish feels to be anything but the size of a schoolie-Striper.  She is everything an ailed angler dreams about during his aching, terrestrially-based waking moments.  It’s the reason we rise hours before dawn, bathing ourselves with the reflected sunlight beaming from the argenteous-white surface of the moon as we fastidiously work a desired section of beach, intent on proving to ourselves that our gut-instinct knows fish are here.  It serves to make us want to try again.  I may have been completely surprised to feel the instantaneous hook-up that I have during this encroaching period of dusk, but I feel as though I’ve done everything as best I could to successfully lead myself to such a rewarding juncture set atop local sand framed by this uncommon instance of a placid, sleeping sea.

The inserted key held in my hand has turned to open a locked door, allowing me to freely step-through to a world rarely visited and in this case, never thought quite possible.  Holding the weighty, dripping-wet, slim-covered paragon of my endeavors and staring her in the eye is always an unparalleled breath of satisfaction, a unique gift, but at all times, I am the wayfaring fisherman casting much, much more than plastic swimming lures.  I am engrossed within a perennial pursuit of the mysterious allure associated with angling, with the red-blooded, invigorating challenges presented by my fundamental inability of never being quite capable of seeing directly the extensive world which exists below the enigmatic waterline marrying to the sandy stage which I set my sinking feet upon, with embarking upon courses of solitude, appointments with peace, where I may pronounce myself “as one” before the soft photonic surge of a new flaming sunrise or conversely, the dimming and dipping disappearance of the circular, orange-colored flood lamp below the western horizon.  I am at odds, constantly poising and repositioning myself along the shoreline, a knight on this chessboard seeking to exclaim “checkmate!” sometime during this match of determination, this guessing game where I never wish for a guarantee, but rather hope for an opportunity to prove myself capable.  This magnificently vast sea, uncontrolled in her daily actions, may be thought of as my world-class touring theatre company where I alone act as my own director responsible for every action I make, restlessly intent on drawing-forth a one-of-a-kind performance from her obscured, aqueous depths.  Tonight, I have been fortunate enough to do just that.  My cast of characters has gracefully performed on an unprecedented level of showmanship, inciting this audience of one to his feet in a roaring ovation.  Bravo!  This very special span of time is all mine.  I own it. 

Be ready to take-up any line she doesn’t strip off the spool, or you’ll lose her, these are barbless hooks, remember! I silently yell to myself.  My instructional words of advice are like those made to an exhausted boxer from his shouting, bulging-eyed trainer in-between late rounds of heated fighting.  As seriously-minded as I must remain in order to land this fish, I cannot help but to also embrace the flooding associations of joy harmonizing my spirit, derived from this yet unseen, temporary connection now bound on the other end of this carbon-fiber fulcrum I hold, pumping-in the prospects of scaled opportunity.  I find myself lost amongst the riveting, giddy-feelings awakening a not-so-distant, child-like euphoria where I’m lost in the moment, literally reeling-in the soul-satisfying pleasures of discovery wrought from an ancient, and to this very tense second, basic activity of leisure. 

I’m only fighting a fish, remember.  As surfcasters, it would be correct to say that each of our spirit’s teem with the unassailable gift of hope we carry packed into the tubes of our surf bags, where we seek to wade the fringes of the Atlantic, casting these plastic and metal-lipped testaments of our ambition deep into turbulent, foaming-white waves, waiting patiently for that shocking tug, our fifteen minutes of fame when we are called to wrangle with fish like this.  If you’re amongst the many who have achieved “veteran status,” having logged countless hours on the beach, season upon season, year after year, fishing steadfast through the most trying of times and unforgiving of challenges presented by weather, you will know that occurrences such as this one do not occur nearly often enough.  You may stare at the wide, nighttime sky for as long as you choose, but doing so will never guarantee you the opportunity of viewing the instantaneous, explosive finale of a meteor entering the earth’s upper atmosphere and tracing towards the horizon in a flash for the very last second of its existence, catching your eye in pale blue and white colors of illumination.  As a wide-eyed human, and on this evening in particular, a fisherman entangled with luck, I’m reminded that the bounties afforded by life are granted to those who are in the right place at the right time.  That’s exactly where I find myself standing right now.  I am more than grateful to be the only devotee standing on the beach with a heavily bend rod.  I say this, because I know to genuinely appreciate it for what it is, especially since at this time, the current state of fisheries is different today than what is was yesterday, which serves to reinforce my belief that whenever I’m fortunate enough to hook a three-foot Striper on a swimming plug in the surf, I’m in a really damn good place. 

Today, the stakes are higher, the incessant, mounting pressures on the living resources which some dastardly take for granted are greater than ever, the fishes environment, their home, is in a deteriorating state of flux, mostly at the physical and political mismanagement of mankind, stemming from his inappeasable, ravenous desires to crawl in the shameful footsteps of greed and at times, never allow an opportunity to pass without exhibiting his boasting egotism for a cheap cellphone picture (financial gains realized at the hand of Striper stock and forage base overharvesting, senseless kills discarded as by-catch, illegal poaching, freezer-filling mentalities, and trophy kill-tournaments), there are seasonally-recurring, multi-state harvests (inconsistent, individual state regulation mandates, bonus tag programs, and resultant overharvesting of large, female breeders season after season), habitat destruction to contend with (pollution of waterways, hypoxia in Chesapeake Bay estuaries and crucial breeding grounds), and ultimately mankind’s inherent desires to reign supreme over the natural environment (futile rounds of seashore beach replenishment projects, consequential underwater “sand-desert” creation, reef burials, and proposed groin notchings coupled with sand-fill interments). 

I’m not nearly as pessimistic as my bellyaching appears to sound, especially in that with the taut and bending, pulling sensations of things tonight, my distinction at this very second, I should have nothing to complain about.  It’s just that when I stop to really think about it, I’m taken aback that this stock of fish is hit from all angles, every day, around the clock.  This fish has evaded untold peril to grow to be this size.  I’ve fancied many times what it must have been like to surf-cast these same beaches in say, 1680, when the entire ecosystem was virtually as pristine as Nature allowed her to be.  It must have been outrageous.  Would the probability, or even the possibility, of catching up to twenty thirty-pound-plus fish every time I made an outing be as rewarding, or is this sport more of a psychological endeavor to the angler, where the hunt reigns supreme as we are lured deeper into its holding, salty entrapment, being sprinkled with just enough reward to fuel a fin-chasing addiction where we patiently wait-out the turning of another tide, impatiently restless for more?

Of course, there always exist rewarding rays of hope, although sometimes pale in comparison, muted in strength or even obscured beyond common recognition, but they’re out there, you just have to find them.  Fundamentally, this is the very reason we willingly choose to fish; the rationale behind every occasion where we find ourselves against all odds with Nature, a pawn in her commanding hand.  I know I’m fortunate enough to feel the shining of this light more so than often, this core characteristic which sets one angler apart from another.  It’s an intangible, self-defining sense of refinement I find myself stepping closer to with each passing season, as I’m always creeping about, seeking to emerge from the darkness, in search of this splendor, waiting for its familiar warmth to strike my bare, projecting cheeks.  And there’s absolutely no confusion whenever it’s found, I might add.  You will feel it, arresting your body, massaging your soul. 

When it’s all said and done, things could always be worse, right?  That’s why tonight, while standing within the wrapping blanket of ensuing darkness, I feel as though I was made fortuitously illuminated by a coruscating bath of personal fulfillment.  This is my time to bask in glory, for it will not last for long and there is no promise of its return.  There never is.  This needle pulled from the proverbial haystack, a defiant victory over the encompassing cold elements and the capricious nature of my quarry, is nothing more than a perceived moment of piscatorial-perfection ordained through good measure and wise judgments made on my behalf.  While lost in this state of stupor, an anesthetized reality, I smiled with a found joy like that of a man lost at sea finally becoming rescued, as his distressing sense of hopelessness is immediately overcome with a powerful-as-life, riveting vitality, a rebirth of spirit never considered imaginable, as the underside of his forearm is firmly clenched by the unifying grasp offered at the hand of his rescuer, a miraculous sensation thought never to enliven his godforsaken soul, as his life-threatening ordeal vanishes in an instant and a new lease on life immediately blossoms into existence.  Such was the happiness pervading this fisherman’s soul.  A striped fish has come to his rescue.

And so I stood as a man refreshed of vigor, straddled upon a sandy altar along the edge of the calm Atlantic, rolling my head backwards while laughing aloud to the silvery, waxing moon risen over the sea’s horizon, my voice drowning-out in the biting vastness of the thirty-eight-degree air before ever reaching an unseen audience, while looking skyward at the beautifully-impermanent arching of my rod’s upper-half contrast against the gradient of a cloudless, azure-blue sky subsiding with each minute into the advancing twilight.  It was in this very frame of reference where I came to notice a high-altitude, twin-engine jet aircraft at cruise, heading in a north-easterly direction, crossing above my bent rod, a pseudo-distraction of sorts reminding me that I am only temporarily escaping reality during these unfolding seconds while connected to the fish I am focusing dearly on to land, admire briefly with staring eyes and esteemed spirit, before returning her to the dark depths of the sea, submerging my hands above both wrists within the frigid water to feed water over her gills, wriggling her body lengthwise from the grip of her wide peduncle to ensure a proper resuscitation.  As I stood below this passing airplane on the cold November beach, glancing at these dissipating trails of vapor whose texture resembled puffy cotton-balls, illuminated by the sun’s dissolving light in a dull, off-white color, they reminded me that, for while I am alone here on this beach tonight, I am never completely alone.  Within my short-lived solitude, where silence was interrupted only by the cold breeze buffeting my exposed ears and the buzzing bursts of drag taken from my reel’s spool, where I was accompanied by only my thoughts and the darkened vista of an expansive ocean lapping ever so gently towards my feet, I knew I would be reclaimed by modernity the second I turned my back to the sea and my eyes fell upon the world which waited patiently over my shoulders.

To imagine, that this pressurized tube of aluminum and carbon-fiber composite engineering, an altogether taken-for-granted, marvel of modern civilization flying fellow members of mankind from somewhere on this planet to somewhere else could have been regarded an impetus bearing me to conceive these thoughts.  Chances are, I likely wouldn’t have even paid any mind to it being overhead, even if I concentrated haphazardly on spotting its movement, let alone while doing my best to maintain connectivity to a weighty, thrashing fish, but its large, billowing stream of condensation trails were anything but unnoticeable.  These contrails, otherwise known as vapor trails, or even specifically, Aviaticus clouds, are simply the result of water vapor being emitted as plumes from the engines exhaust flow, byproduct emissions from hydrocarbon fuel combustion which resultantly crystallize upon coming into contact with the ambient atmosphere when the air temperature is at least negative-forty-degrees-Fahrenheit, as the droplets raise the saturation point of the surrounding air, cool immediately, and then condense to form the streaks we see.  Very simply put, they are man-made clouds. 

I even think to myself, that this rod I am holding, the tool which initiated this entire plight, is constructed of the very same atomic elements of carbon and hydrogen which are also the primary molecules of the kerosene fuel combusting and vaporizing to propel those passengers along their journey through the sky.  They’re only arranged in different chemical chains, one of which allows me, a man organically composed of these same elements, to hold this staff of cylindrically-rolled carbon-fiber and applied epoxy resin now unified as a fishing rod, also composed of these same elements, and grants me the autonomy to connect with a living organism organically comprised of the very same various elements arranged in the form of a large, swirling fish.  We are each creations formed from these infinitesimal building-blocks of Nature.  We are all one and the same, but altogether different.  

It would be safe to assume that there were easily two-hundred passengers on-board that jet, travelling at over five-hundred miles-per-hour, all occupying seats in the sky, with each valuing a unique existence defining who they are, individuals all living a life entirely different from those seated a row ahead or behind, each guided by different principles and purposes, and each with a presumed reason for necessitating the inestimable benefit of travel offered only by modern aviation.  Where are they all going to?  Here I am, stationary at the foamy fringe of an ocean, more than thirty-thousand-feet below them, fortunate enough by my own estimation to be fighting a species of fish I spend all too much of my waking time preoccupied over.  If for a moment they could possibly see me through those Plexiglas windows, I cannot help but to wonder if any onboard would question my actions, upon viewing a man happier than most poising himself within the elements of a blustery, mid-thirty-degree November evening, hoping to lure a fish into striking a plastic presentation, a fish which may not be anywhere within hundreds of yards from the furthest reaches of his meager cast?  Why does he willingly choose to place himself out there?  Is there something which he feels he needs to prove to himself?  Or, is there some primitive motivation aching from his inside which he feels he must appease, a type of guiding principle or compelling instinct regulating his behaviors?

My counter would simply entreat said inquiries with the following: Have any of you ever connected so close with Nature, so as to stand alone, face-to-face with her, with only the brisk, restless air you breath-in separating your perceptions of reality from her raw, fundamental truths?  Have any of you ever stood before her, wide-eyed, allowing her arresting influence seize the entire core of your being, while succumbing to that unregulated feeling which beckons to draw you nearer to your native self, as you were meant to experience the delicate tenacity of life in this world?  You may very well have, and with that there is nothing more for me to plead.  You have seen the light.  You have felt its warming splendor.  If however, you have ever felt greater than a single grain of sand settled amongst the countless multitudes lying upon a wide, sandy beach stretching for miles, then you may not understand what it is I am hoping to communicate.  You have not yet searched hard enough.  You have not yet witnessed greatness.  On top of all that, I also happen to be a fisherman balancing a bent rod, immersed in a self-satisfying glory.

This life is ours for the taking, for each of us to explore robustly like pioneering adventurers who find themselves driven by insatiable appetites to continually learn from and understand to the best of their abilities this at times bewildering, but always most rewarding in promise, this endeavor known as life, to experience the endless riches of its limitless bounties, for at all times we are nothing more than essential ingredients to a greater whole, individuals bestowed to cast our altogether unique and indelible mark upon the world.  Rise forth! She is begging for your participation!  Breathe-in deeply this brilliance penetrating the deepest reaches of your chest’s expanding lungs!  The mysteries which lie unknown to us in this life, awaiting our discovery, constitute the very courses distinguishing how each of us chooses to define ourselves, which combination of colors we will select to paint our paths with like that of a quintessential masterpiece, illustrating each of our intimate revelations made to this world to proclaim just who we are.  And so at the moment I happen to be wielding a fishing rod, but it is here, in Nature’s guiding presence, where I am ever enlightened as her eager protégé, a student intently engaged in listening to every spoken word she whispers in my ears.  I come here to listen, so I am determined to listen well.

During this short, passing minute in time, others miles above are en route to a destination important to them, just as I stand submerged within a watery destination important to me.  And tonight especially, I had the unexpected company of two extraordinary specimens to ease my standing solitude through the dimming daylight of another slipping sunset, where another cold and blustery autumn afternoon spent casting for striped-dreams and a sense of soulful relief along the shoreline transformed into a type of season-closing demarcation of flopping, scaled-perfection.  After scores of outings had on beaches, I have hooked-into, fought, and successfully subdued not one, but two, personal-best Stripers from the New Jersey surf.  Who would have thought it was to occur at the heels of the third straight week of a relentless, west-wind onslaught, where fish were taken from a glass-smooth sea, with no baitfish present, during a lackluster (at best) fall-run of migratory fish, amidst a lunar-illuminated sky only days away from a full-moon.   As a welcomed reward, I was made benefactor of being in the right place, at the right time.  It was as if this date with destiny was orchestrated exclusively for me, for nobody else along the entire beachfront.  How else would you explain to me that the very spot I chose to fling my first cast from this beach, whereupon seconds of retrieving a plastic swimming plug, it was aggressively attacked by a 36” fish.  On my second cast of the evening, after reeling yet from the ecstatic aftermath of the finned-fortune I pulled from the infinite, unvarying Atlantic, my retrieve was stopped suddenly again as another keeper-sized Striper of 34” locked jaws onto my offering.  For me, this was a slime-laden, piscatorial present, ripened fruit snatched from the Fishing Gods cornucopia, imparted to me by means of the feverish, favonian winds, but ultimately, a found sense of freedom afforded by the hunger-pangs of apex predators stealthily cruising the shadowy shallows of a glass-smooth sea at dusk. 

With the falling water temperature, these fish are quickly on the move south, driven by a biologic instinct to migrate.  There is no stopping them.  The distinct changes occurring daily within this playground of the sea are just as apparent as those left in the wake of an aircraft painting streaks of contrails across a cloudless sky.  And much like the impermanence of vanishing vapor trails, one morning I will wake-up to learn the fish I chased all season-long are gone too, and all that which will remain in my wake are the expansive, trailing stream of memories, the byproduct of my high-flying passions for navigating the wide, blue unknown flowing before my feet.  Yet another season of surf fishing will have ended, and the sea’s boundlessly breaking waves rolling ashore the only haunting reminder that finned-life gliding under these waves is someday promised to return.

Billowing contrails, crystallized water vapor, streak the sky in the wake of a commercial aircraft.

This 36” Striper was taken from a glass-smooth surf, hooked in less than six-feet of water.