After a Long Skunking, We Caught the Biggest Striper Blitz of the Fall

This story, “Day of the Monster,” appeared within the August 1960 problem of Out of doors Life.

Based on all of the ex­perts, Cape Cod striped-bass fishing is meant to succeed in its seasonal peak over the past a part of September and the primary half of October. Statistically talking, if you happen to common the fats and the lean years, that is true: late fall is a potent interval.

Alternatively, these ornery, unpredictable critters with stripes might determine emigrate in mid-Sep­tember or to gap up someplace within the northern bays, to journey south after the beach-buggy skippers have racked their rods and referred to as it a sea­son. Or they might additionally select to spend Indian summer season days on the offshore bars, lazily ignoring small boats, plugs, baits, and the exasperation of anglers who can see them, however can’t attain them.

For a few years now, I’ve fished for stripers by my very own floor guidelines. These are: to pay due homage to the statistics which show one season of the yr probably higher than one other, however to maintain a suspicious eye on the altering of tides, the motion of bait, the vagaries of climate, and the unpredictable nature of stripers.

To catch striped bass persistently, and even sometimes, a person should be one thing of an opportunist. He should take nothing with no consideration, and he must be prepared to maneuver quick when the birds, the beach-buggy grapevine, or perhaps a nagging hunch whisper that stripers might oblige.

Ralph Grey of Southville, Massa­chusetts, will agree, for in the course of the 1958 season he and I noticed an uncommon demonstration of the pernickety na­ture of stripers — their moody disre­gard for plugs and lures on one tide and their sudden, explosive need to strike at something on one other.

Ralph’s a beach-buggy “common,” which implies that he fishes the excessive surf throughout every weekend of the lengthy season, and at some other time when he can manufacture an excuse to slide away from his enterprise of drilling artesian wells.

Like so many Cape Cod fanatics, he drives a car rigged for fishing — a four-wheel-drive truck fitted with oversize tires and a coach physique loaded with bunks, galley, and duffel compartments. He carries an alumi­num boat on a rack over the cab.

I’m editor of The Salt Water Sportsman and an outside author for the Worcester Night Gazette in Worcester, Mass. On the late-Sep­tember day when this journey be­gan, after I’d arrived at Province­city on the finish of the Cape, I hadn’t deliberate on fishing with Ralph Grey. I used to be going it alone. As I neared the seaside, there was no wind and the solar was good. It felt like July as a substitute of September, however I knew it was time for the massive stripers to be gorging on butterfish and menhaden — it was the now-or-never season.

On the best way to the seaside, I ended at Natalie and Joe Roderick’s service station for the newest information. Natalie and Joe aren’t striper addicts, however their retailer is the unofficial leaping­ off spot for seaside buggies going out over the dunes. Natalie was tending the place, and she or he knew precisely what I meant once I requested, “The place are they?”

“Wind was southwest final evening, in order that they’ll be at Peaked Hill,” she informed me. “Charley noticed a variety of bass on the bars final evening, and Ralph had one on. Didn’t catch any, although.” 

I loaded the panel truck with gro­ceries, drove all the way down to Race Level Coast Guard Station and let air out of my tires. Provincetown seashores are comfortable, and it’s typically essential to deflate to 10 kilos throughout. The seaside was unusually quiet. The sum­mer folks have been gone, and the roll­ing beige and inexperienced dunes stretched away for miles. It was as lonely because the day the Pilgrims got here to Race Level.

I drove over the well-packed monitor and hit the outer seaside simply west of The Cottages. The surf was light. No gulls have been flying, no bait flipped within the wash. Possibly tonight, I assumed, shifting to second velocity because the monitor straightened.
5 minutes later I noticed the primary group of buggies, perhaps half a dozen huddled collectively on the excessive dunes. From a distance they at all times appear to be automobiles from a far planet.

Charley Whitney was there together with his large walk-in. Joe Enis, Ralph Grey, George Geddry, and Arnold Laine have been loafing within the daylight, listening to a baseball sport roaring out of a giant, short-wave radio. These radios are additionally used to listen in on native constitution skippers.

Right here was a tough core of “regulars,” males who appear to spend extra time on the seaside than they do at house. Whitney is the retired president of a trucking firm in Worces­ter, Mass. Joe Enis runs a scrap­ metallic enterprise in Taunton, Mass., and Geddry is a gross sales government in Washington, D. C. Arnold Laine is a dwelling legend on the outer Cape; he makes a precarious dwelling at com­mercial rod-and-line striper fishing, and a few say that he catches extra bass than some other surfman on this planet.

We have been all taking part in the averages, figuring out that late September and early October simply would possibly produce among the quickest striped bass fish­ing of the season. Big linesiders get stressed at the moment of yr. They sense the approaching migration and have a tendency to feed ravenously.

Charley and Ralph had been there for per week, and so they have been starting to surprise. There weren’t any bass, to not catch, anyway. “However you must see ’em on these bars,” Charley growled. “They’re packed shoulder to shoulder, like sardines; and a few of ’em are actually big.” 

“Will they hit eels at evening?” I requested, pleased with the truth that I had a dozen recent ones on ice.

“An excessive amount of hearth within the water,” Ralph stated. “That phosphorescence makes an eel appear to be a red-hot poker. They simply aren’t hitting.”

We fished in useless for per week. We fished morning and night tides with plugs, rigged eels, and block tin squids. We experimented with sea worms on backside and caught a large number of skates. Each time a slick unfold its telltale sign on the offshore swells we launched small boats and went out to analyze. Bass have been there, however they weren’t feeding. 

“They’ll eat finally,” Ralph stated, “and once they do, we’ll be right here.”

However they didn’t eat, or in the event that they did, it was surreptitiously in the course of the few hours we slept. Ralph would possibly have the ability to wait them out, however I needed to get again to my job. Two extra days, I made a decision.

On the final evening of September I launched my 12-foot aluminum boat and labored my means fastidiously out via the offshore bars to some extent reverse Pilgrim Springs, down the coast at North Truro. It was quiet and unusually brilliant on the market. A mild swell pulsed in from the Atlantic. The shoreside dunes have been etched towards the sky. I’d been casting rigged eels for some time, when one other boat loomed out of the gloom. It was Ralph, additionally prospecting the offshore bars. We sat there, every with a hand on the opposite’s gunwale to carry our boats collectively, and loved an previous New England gam. 

“We must sleep at evening,” Ralph stated. “Final week these fish rushed bait in the course of the afternoon. I bought my 51-pounder on a popping plug.”

A bit wind puffed out of the south­west. An outboard went droning up the coast. “Pay attention,” Ralph whispered.

“Only a boat,” I muttered. “Man’s quitting for the evening.”

“Not that,” he stated — after which I heard it.

From the southeast, not too far out, we heard an intermittent rustling and popping. A faculty of bass was driving bait our means. Quickly we might see an extended patch of black, troubled water shot with little explosions of white spray. We additionally noticed bait taking pictures across the boats, every tiny fish glowing like a inexperienced ghost and trailing a comet’s tail of phosphorescence.

The stripers got here racing in like a wolf pack, wallowing on the floor, slapping their tales and taking pictures off like rockets. It was a superb show, however we weren’t in any respect spellbound by it. 

When the feeding bass ignored a rigged eel, I switched to a plug, then to a bucktail. Ralph was dropping his casts exactly, proper within the convulsive boils brought on by the linesiders. They wouldn’t hit; lastly it was over.

By that point the wind had freshened and a skein of clouds had misted the celebrities. “Let’s go to mattress,” Ralph grumbled, and I agreed. We yanked starter cords and planed again to our seaside­-buggy village. A full week of fishing with out a strike! Who stated stripers chunk greatest in September?

The wind blew up a storm that evening. I might really feel my buggy rocking within the blast. There was rain, too, with some jagged lightning over the Atlantic, and at daybreak a blood-colored solar glow­ered via low scud.

Arnold’s seaside buggy had developed motor hassle, and within the morning he needed to go to Provincetown for repairs. We went in with him. We topped off the gasoline tanks at Natalie’s, laid in professional­visions, and acquired newspapers. The wind was nonetheless freshening, blowing half a gale from the southwest, and gusts of chilly rain pattered towards the wind­protect. We have been bone-weary and dissatisfied. The stripers wouldn’t co­-operate, and the climate was turning as awful as it could actually get in New England within the fall. Stop and go house?

“Let’s strive Pilgrim Springs,” some­one instructed. “We’ll have the ability to solid a mile on this wind.”

“I’ll comply with you out, later,” Arnold stated. “Can’t inform, this climate would possibly stir ’em up.”

We entertained no hope. This was October 1, and every of us noticed the grim ending of one other season. October is a month of balmy, blue days — and line storms that half your hair all the way down to the cranium. If Cape Cod’s temperature soars to 80° on Monday, you may be fairly certain it’ll plummet to 50° on Tuesday. With wind. And rain.

Ralph led the parade, and I adopted. George Geddry was trailering a giant lapstrake boat behind his jeep, however the remainder of us had small aluminum skiffs on our racks. You are feeling these boats in a excessive wind, and you retain questioning whether or not the tie-downs are safe.

There are two methods to succeed in Pilgrim Springs. You may drive the outer seaside from Race Level Coast Guard Station, reducing up over a excessive dune at Peaked Hill, or you possibly can are available from the land facet, grinding via a soft-as-sugar monitor bordered by wild roses and bayberries. We took the latter route, so we couldn’t see the water till the monitor wormed its means up and over a few sculptured sand hills.

An indignant sea was rolling in off the bars. White water spurted as combers slammed into the seaside. Past the surf, lots of of sea birds have been circling and diving, and beneath them have been swirls of froth and flashes of silver as baitfish skittered into the air. There was little question about it: Acres of massive stripers have been engaged in a feeding spree. This was the lengthy­ awaited blitz.

Ralph plowed his buggy down off the excessive dunes, all 4 wheels clutching for a toehold. I adopted him, and noticed that the opposite buggies have been hurtling off the peak behind us. A number of slowed down within the comfortable sand, however nobody considered shovels or planks. The boats have been coming off the racks be­fore the mud had settled.

I used to be frantically making an attempt to yank the tie-downs off my skiff when Ralph yelled over his shoulder. “It’s so tough, why don’t we exit collectively this time? That surf is not any picnic!”

I dropped the whole lot and we man­ dealt with his 14-footer off the rack. Geddry was backing his lapstrake into the suds by the point we had our motor clamped on the transom, and rods aboard. We then loaded an anchor, buoyant seat cushions, a few tin squids, half a dozen plugs apiece, and a model new gaff that hadn’t been christened.

“Take her out,” Ralph howled towards the scream of the wind, and I grabbed the oars. He gauged the incoming swells, picked the best second, and shoved off. It was a superb launching. The motor began on the primary pull, and Ralph throttled down as we climbed, nearly vertically, up the face of a giant swell. “Have a look at these fish,” he was yelling. “Man, that is it. It’s now or by no means!”

The motion was nearer shore than we’d thought. Stripers have been sagging in over the bar, then racing out to sea once more, battering the milling bait.

College tuna weighing between 75 and 100 kilos have been there too, however we wished no a part of them.

Ralph had slapped his rod in a holder as quickly as we have been away from the surf, and now he flipped the free-spool lever and let the road stream again, checked solely by the press. His lure was a subsurface swimming plug, and he had two dowels of lead pinched on the chief 4 toes forward of the lure. 

We weren’t 50 yards off the seaside when Ralph’s reel shrilled in protest. He grabbed his surf rod, slapped the winch into gear and whooped as the primary striper of the day started stirring up the floor. It was a giant one.

The wind was whistling and our boat went scudding alongside. Ralph was consuming a shredded cigarette because the berserk monster stored stripping line off the spool. He lastly turned the fish and introduced it again, pumping steadily. His medium-weight surf rod was bent nearly double, and I bear in mind considering that the ability of the striper and the drive of the wind would possibly mix to supply a sticky scenario. I waited, gaff in hand.

However this was simply one other bass to Ralph. He’s caught some large ones, and misplaced just a few that might have raised eyebrows. “Fairly quickly, now,” he muttered between clenched tooth. I noticed the chief after which the large, brassy facet of the fish.

We bought him on the primary go. The gaff bit deep, however I discovered it troublesome to haul the fish over the gunwale. Each palms turned the trick, nonetheless, and we paused to admire the primary one of many day. We’d have been much less matter of reality about it had we identified that this was the second largest striper ever taken on rod and line, and the biggest whipped by a sport fisherman since 1913! In the mean time, nonetheless, it was nonetheless “simply one other fish.” We hadn’t clocked preventing time: perhaps 10 minutes, perhaps 20. It was early afternoon, between 1 and a pair of o’clock.

“Should go 50 kilos,” Ralph stated. The lunker wasn’t very lengthy as large bass go, however he was abnormally deep-bodied. The tape measure, later, stated 50 inches. We’d figured that, however the girth shocked us — 34 inches. It was the scales, an hour later, that basically popped our eyes: 68 ½ kilos.

I hung the following bass, a cartwheeling battler that wolfed a subsurface plug so completely that we needed to lower the chief and fix one other lure. “A minimum of 30 kilos,” I grinned, including one other understatement. The bass weighed in at higher than 46.

We boated three extra large fish earlier than the wind hauled into the north­west, and the climate actually misplaced its head with a collection of violent rain squalls. A confused chop was constructing: white water exploded to port and starboard. One ragged, spitting wave got here proper over the bow. The birds have been nonetheless round us, screaming within the wind — however we headed house.

Seashore-buggy boats on Cape Cod experience the combers ashore. Miss a wave and also you get swamped, however hit it proper, at full throttle, and also you’re in. Ralph circled on the primary run. The breakers have been build up and operating nearer collectively. We got here round, following a giant swell. Ralph poured the smoke to her, and we have been dedicated. I held on to the gunwales anxiously. Ralph had hit the wave excellent, and we rode it ashore, proper on the crest. When the comber blew up beneath us, we got here down as simply as if we’d had a parachute to ease the drop. Half a dozen surfmen ran to assist us tote the craft above imply excessive water.

All palms have been soaked to the pores and skin, chattering with chilly, however fully pleased. Everybody appeared to have struck it wealthy. Joe Enis produced the scales, and that was the climax. Nobody within the annals of latter-day surf fishing had taken a bass as large as Grey’s. In all of angling historical past, just one rod-and-line striper had topped this catch — the 73-pounder boated by Charles B. Church in 1913.

It was an awesome day. The lengthy­ awaited fall blitz appeared to be beneath means, and no man amongst us was pre­pared to give up and go house. All of us knew, with that peculiar, fanatic de­termination widespread to surfmen, that tomorrow would deliver greater bass.

However you recognize one thing? That was the final essential flurry of the 1958 striper season on Cape Cod. Like I say, you need to be an opportunist.