Exposures - April & May 2020 / "The One That Got Away"

COVID-19 quarantining enforcement began in NJ (Mar. 16th) about three-weeks before I planned trips to a number of typical early-season shorelines in search of April stripers.  I can't say that any of the public beach parking lot closures that I encountered affected gaining access to desired stretches of sand.  Thank goodness for that, as surf fishing offered some small sense of normalcy to - gratefully - enter one's life for a given retreat of time.    

As seen at a popular marina and state park.

Just as in 2019, Bunker were again packed along the shoreline of the Raritan and river systems of the Navesink and Shrewsbury during early-March.  The above photo was taken on April 7th.  On many outings the schools were so thick, that snagging seemed unavoidable even on the slowest of retrievals.  

A keeper-sized striper found cruising the Raritan's shallows of April.

(L-R) Sirius and Orion in the southern sky (Venus out of frame) - reliable companions appearing after sunset throughout April's outings waded along shallow shoreline.

The 2% waxing crescent caught setting between open slivers of covering cloud on April 24th.

A surprise Weakfish landed on May 6th (6-inch shad, for comparison).

"You cannot cast anywhere in the river without the conviction that it’s drifting over fish.  That you may know better counts for nothing in the overpowering impression of possibility, one of the pleasant illusions from which an angling life is built."

One of the notable and invigorating striped-rewards I delightfully returned to the nighttime tide's of May.  Measuring 38", this fish proved to be a tame warm-up to my haunting hook-set made just three casts later. 

"The slack felt terrible.  I cursed myself and milled around stupidly, trembling with a spike of adrenaline I no longer needed.  The worst part of losing good fish is that you cannot release them.  They tailwalk across the back of your mind for days."

Christopher Camuto - A Fly Fisherman's Blue Ridge (part IV - A Moveable Feast) 

I traced my fingers over the barrel swivel, running them like a set of antennae feeling for feedback over some length of lifeless monofilament to a chafed and severed leader’s end, staring at it in disbelief as my mind agonizingly tormented whhhhhyyyyy?!!  Just seconds earlier, I was bracing extraordinary rod leverage from a sprawled footing that adeptly skittered over loose sand and gravel to anchor myself as the champion benefactor to a remarkable inheritance of finned-fortune.  Just minutes earlier, a startling instance, largely unexpected and altogether abrupt, physically triggered that responsive instinct of my tactile sense from somewhere within the cavernous depths of ink-black tidewater funneling seaward, as tell-tail tugs telegraphed headshakes landward through a thread-thin communication line of braided polyethylene fibers, abducting its recipient of all lapsing idleness.  Her message delivered, clear as day.  As if rocketed to commitment from zero to sixty, some single-most uncommon specimen of striped-fish possessed a wader-clad disciple afflicted of the night-crawling obsession to wrangle from the vantage of a deeply-bowed stick of straining graphite.

Lightning struck.  Suddenly, I was some surf fisherman some-where, nestled riverside under a cool, overcast blanket of night pressing calmly of its southwest breath of springtime exhalation, one obscuring an otherwise nearly fully-formed lunar face of midnight illumination, grappling to tame one of Morone's ancient matriarchs.  Vying, with each horizontally-held retaliation of exploited, medium-heavy-rated rod backbone cantilevered over running water, pressing from a ribcage-digging placement of counterbalance, pulling at a runaway locomotive evading down-current.  Watchful of my spool spinning and dumping more line than I’ve ever seen.  Panicking that this fish may not stop running.  Worrying about having enough line.  Concerned about having to retrieve so much mainline against a turning tidal flow that is advancing in egress.  Sweating for every foot of taut-sounding, hardwound reclamation of line regained with every ratcheting pump and reaching nod to this unrelenting down-tide pressure by spurt of cranked reel handle.  Focusing intently through the otherwise sheer excitement of imagining the size of such a fish, so as to ultimately make sight of her visually-arresting fins of fascination emerging topside, of a standing saw-tooth dorsal and broom-sized caudal outlining her bathtub-size of a body illustrated of those seven laterally-running stripes of incessant inspiration painted permanently of any surfcaster's dreams.  Grunting between breaths to the forcibly-pulling exertions of this fittest female veteran of survival, weighty of a mass amassed in having successfully outswam the perils of predation encountered during living a long-life of lifelong marathon coastal migrations, estimated by feel to be tipping a scale measuring nearly two-decade’s time.  As an angler struggling to suppress a leviathan’s underwater locomotion for an uplifting encounter of her surface-breaking belly of white and eye-popping embodiment of size symbolizing the sport’s thirty-thousand unanswered casts, that if only subdued unto riverbank reed and grass, would prove to justify reward of an astonishing length and worthwhile wait.  Such never-before-measured double-digits of distinction pronounced of the sacred sounding “f” and studied mouth agape under headlamp as one’s "personal best."  A moss-green and golden-shouldered trophy won of a lifetime at playing the game of tides.  Such was the turn of outgoing on May 5^th that proved to be the imminent mile-marker of opportunity for me, if only...... 

Three casts prior to what felt like snagging the waterway's bottom, I landed a hefty 38" fish after a modest and (to that point of the outing) fulfilling fight.  Her maneuvers of escape were ordinary and her strength exhibited nothing outrageously noticeable in difference as compared to the many generous 35”+ fish I skirmished of past seasons and years.  Solid, for sure.  A good fish just has that feeling.  Some line was taken, but a strong rod brought it to net quickly. 

Still beaming of happiness at landing that first fish, and knowing that it was early May and I had staked claim to the right place at the right time, I fervently cast-out for another sweeping drift.  Retrieve, aim, launch; then another.  Retrieve, then the following drift that, for a split-second, and entirely common and expected from this location, felt caught on an obstruction, but obstructions don’t suddenly animate and move!  A few rapid head-shakes let me know that the sudden stoppage to my paddle-tailed presentation was otherwise alive and entirely hell-bent on towing line from my leaning over the lazily ebbing tide's riverbank.  The submarine made, for all practical purposes, very near, virtually-unyielding and unending runs down-tide.  Four of them.  My reel emptied of 40-lb-test Sufix.  The beautiful hissing of drag was interrupted only by a seat-of-my-saddle sense of urgency necessitating one recruited, quasi-panicked, index finger’s applied pressure.  Touch-release, touch-release, touch-release until the might of mass could be slowed to finally stop-still.  I felt the fish’s sheer weight anchor in the tide, like an unmovable stone to my rod’s maxed-out coaxing.  Every straining muscle within me knew, undoubtedly, that this was the fish of a lifetime.  I would gain line and she would take all of it back, and then some.  Leveraging, readjusting, repositioning, huffing, and grunting of breath.  More than once, I subtly, if not desperately, pressured the fish to some nano-second limit beyond which I felt comfortable in doing, precariously, if not foolishly, risking a total-loss to the name of stupidity or tackle failure, but gambling so in knowing that the tide's gaining flow would only counteract my challenged topside pressure, held frozen for minutes and paused of possible retrieval, to the sinking sensation of this bulging kite held open underwater and unmoving down-tide. 

Ten minutes time brought the genuflecting arc of a pulsing, medium-heavy rod tip to the waterline at my feet.  Still, no color was made visible.  I only imagined at how big this striper was going to appear at any moment to my widened, awe-struck eyes.  A 5-gallon bucket-sized head?  A wide, broadside body displaying a distended belly?  A broom-sized tail surrendering to the surface, motionless to the current’s on-flow?  Is this fish inches from 50”?  Maybe it is a 50!"  It made that 38" feel like child's play 15-min ago.  It’s crazy to guess length, but it feels 35lbs. easy, all-day-long. I dunno, wouldn’t be surprised to know it’s 40lbs or more. 

This was my night of all nights.  A shining triumph as a Jersey surfcaster.  In under a minute’s untamed time yet remaining, in less than ten-feet of water, was the biggest fish I had ever hooked.  And again, it nearly felt as if I was attached to the bottom.  Not physically; I knew the fish was free of obstruction.  I felt her swirling side-to-side below.  She was just a mass of dead-weight, resisting to rise, like something stuck in-place.  I applied loads of upheaving pressure, as cautiously as possible.  My uppermost eyelets briefly submerged themselves in building the shape of a deep arch stretching downward to draw her upward.  This was it, the twelfth round.  I would gain a few feet, and then lose it.  I was never totally "in control" per se, rather I was greatly influencing her whereabouts to a point that led her directly underneath me.  She didn't feel as though she was entirely finished either, rather, regaining breath, inhaling the oncoming life-blood of saltwater through her mouth, flushing it over her gills as if priming a shot of gunpowder for her tail.  As luck had it, I made it this far, against all sharp or protruding odds down-tide and by the holding grace of a single, barbless-hook embedded somewhere in (or to) her jawline just securely enough.  I feared another run with the tide would only benefit her escape.  What’s more, at this point of elapsed time, I didn’t trust that I could confidently turn her from and against a deep-run within the tailwind strength of down-tide flow. 

I now know what a big fish feels like.  What amazed me throughout all of this, was that my finned-prize never surfaced once, either in a single, fighting tail thrash, or exhaustive bout of listing and rolling fatigue.  She held deep the entire struggle, with what I could only envision, as a result of having physically engaged with, were her head and shoulders held steadfast into the current, employing use of her downright heavy weight and broad body pitched like a sail against oncoming flow to compound resistance exercised against me.  I cannot say that I ever once felt the fish roll-over or ascend toward the surface. 

I don't hold any regrets in how I fought the fish.  I was 95% of the way to smiling like I never would have before for a fish.  In a last-ditch effort, I can only imagine that she thrashed her large tail, scouring nose-down along the bottom in a fleeing burst below me, further chafing the line drawn from her crimping maw, severing the 50-lb. monofilament leader on some heart-stabbing hurdle of rock or debris strewn over the riverbed.  Whatever it was, she found it, leaving me stood-up on this especially intoxicating night of Cinco de Mayo with a feeling of sinking-loss in having broken-off our blind date before ever appearing to chance eye-to-golden-iris-eye.  Talk about a hangover….