Dan's Papers - November 16, 2007

Why do certain people love to go surfcasting? They go down to the beach with a lot of gear, put rubber waders on over their street clothes and spend long hours standing in the surf and staring at the sea to no effect. They occasionally issue a flick of the wrist to cast out the line that has drifted in with the surf. They occasionally reel in a five or ten pound fish. And that's about it.

Unlike the bathers in the summertime or the beach bonfire people at night or beach picnic people in the autumn or even the surfers, they are not interested in any social contact with others.

You don't hear them chatting away with one another. If they talk at all with anybody, it's about fish or bait. Or maybe it's about a surf area somewhere else that they've heard has just gotten hot.

Indeed, as a frequent beachgoer myself - I'm down there writing stories on my laptop - I do sense a certain kinship with the surfcasters. I'm down there wanting to be alone with the ocean, focusing on writing these stories. They're down there alone focusing on the ocean so they can try to catch some fish to bring home to their family to eat. There is something very satisfying about that.

Or maybe in the fall, especially for those with big poles and lines, they are specifically down there to hit the jackpot. They cast, no jackpot. They cast again, still no jackpot. They might as well be at the casino. The jackpot is stripers.

For a moment, I would like to ask you to imagine the biggest thing you might be able to heft out of the ocean on the end of your fishing line while standing alone on the sand.

A tuna? Tuna can weigh well over a hundred pounds. Catch a tuna, you'll cut your line. Too big.

A bluefish? Most bluefish weigh ten or twelve pounds. They are fighters and they have sharp teeth, but for most surfcasters you can bring them in fairly easily if you're patient with them and let them wear themselves out and then stay out of their way for a while after you've reeled them in.

Can we agree that perhaps the largest fish you might reel in out of the ocean on a line might weigh fifty or sixty pounds? That's the jackpot. And that would be a striped bass of that size, which incidentally is as much of a fighter as a bluefish.

When a surfcaster gets a nibble and then a bite from a striped bass of that size, even a striped bass of forty or thirty pounds, the other fishermen nearby stop what they are doing to gather around and watch the effort. Will the line break? Will the striper cut himself free? Will the fisherman - approaching exhaustion himself - cut the line? It is a humiliating thing to have to do that. But sometimes that's what you have to do.

How often will a big striper over fifty pounds be caught in the surf off the Hamptons? Maybe once a year. Over thirty pounds? Maybe once a week.

The surfcasters drive down to wherever they are. And they learn about where the fish are either by cell phone or by CB radios, which are tucked under the dashboards of their pickups. The surfcasters are not in their trucks, of course, they are out in front of them, surfcasting.

What they do is listen for people laughing and shouting excitedly. When that happens, they will brace their poles in the sand and wander over and listen. And more times than not, they will quickly pack up and head for wherever the action is, because things being what they are, the action is not where they are standing.

And so, sometimes, I'll be out on the beach writing and there'll be five or six surfcasters out there, even in cold weather - I'm writing in my truck - and suddenly they all pull up stakes and they're gone. Or sometimes, I'll be out there all alone and suddenly there's twenty or thirty of them, setting up and sending out their lines with great enthusiasm.

I've learned it's all about the birds. If suddenly a flock of them begin circling out over the ocean just offshore, cawing away and sometimes dive bombing and coming up with a little fish in their mouths - well, there you are. It means a flock of happy surfcasters, maybe cawing madly, is not far behind.

In any case, this past week, as Hurricane Noel rushed up the coast offshore of the Hamptons to the east, it pushed huge herds of little tiny bait fish in its path, called bunker fish, into shore in enormous numbers, with the bluefish and more importantly, the stripers, in full pursuit. It was a rare thing, an event of this magnitude. And so it was, for this past week, jackpot time for the surfcasters in the Hamptons.

Striped bass caught along the beaches at Shinnecock and Moriches in great numbers were in the twenties and thirties. The striped bass were even venturing into the bays. Eric Kreymborg caught a 35-pounder, one of the largest, at Shinnecock Inlet this past Saturday. Out at Montauk, under the lighthouse in particular, the stripers were in the forties and fifties. Mike Milano had one at 55 pounds one day, but as he had already caught one slightly smaller - you are allowed one a day - he had to throw it back. Then, a few days later, he reeled in an astonishing 61-pound striped bass. This was the largest striped bass caught on the East End in fifteen years.

Last week in this newspaper, Bob Tuma, who at 84 is still going out fishing every day in his charter boat The Dawn, was interviewed and described how things have changed out in the open sea when it comes to catching fish.

"Today you don't need a navigator to find fish. Electronics will find them for you, and will take you there and bring you right up alongside a fish to bring him in. It's a whole different thing."

Well, sport fishermen are doing it the old fashioned way, with nothing to guide them but the enthusiasm of other fishermen over the radio.

They are one of the great treasures of the East End, and if you want to, there is nothing to prevent you from getting some gear and going on down there and joining them.