Stripers!

Last night I wrote about my near-miss with a big bluefish  and the lack of striped bass in August. I also wrote about my current book, The Longest Silence, by Thomas McGuane.

As I lay in bed last night reading McGuane's chapter about his fishing trip to the Elizabeth Islands just off Woods Hole, where I am staying, I got a text from my friend Mark. It read, simply, "5 am?"

He had figured out the bite is on at first light in Quick's Hole, a passage between Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound that is larger than but behaves very much much like a river.

I eagerly replied, "yes," and continued reading.

Dave ran us through Quick's Hole between Pasque and Nashawena and pulled us into a beautiful, quiet bay on the north side of Nashawena."

So often the books and fish stories we read are about places distant and unlikely to be visited. Yet, this account was just a few miles and a few hours away for me.

Dave spotted a school of stripers...We had tied on Clouser Minnows, a pattern of nearly universal effectiveness, and striped bass see them as tremendous opportunity.

In a beautiful passage, McGuane writes, "I, often confined by riverbanks, was fascinated by this wide-angled view. I soon was made comfortable by our fishing along the rocks, the ocean gulping and foaming around their bases. It looked right when a big green-and-white Deceiver dropped into this turmoil and was drawn into this fishy darkness."

I slept well all night, with all the windows open so the fog could creep around my bedclothes and I could better hear the sonorities of the sea buoy. All night long I received cheerful visits from family ghosts and remembered how I once longed for a single striped bass.

I drifted off to sleep myself and was in Quicks Hole -- a good 30 minute sprint from Falmouth Harbor -- by 5:50 the next morning. The sea birds were diving and the fish erupting all around us. Having lost my Deceiver to the big bluefish the night before, I had rigged up with a large pink Clouser and a stronger test line.  I hooked one fish but he got away.  I cast and cast but could not entice another fish. Suddently the bite was off.

We moved on to Robinson's Hole, the next island over.

"This is what we dream of," I told Mark.

Sea birds were all around us and the fish were feeding in a frenzy right next to the rocky bank. I cast into the middle of the frenzy and finally, a good solid take from a fish I could handle with the right test line. I hauled in a beautiful striped bass. This was not the 28 pounder you see in those fish magazines, but it was a respectable striper caught on a fly.

I hooked another striper in the same spot, but alas that was it. Just as McGuane had written, "a single striped bass."