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Strange Allure of Surf Fishing

Surf fishing on Martha's Vineyard is akin to a religion

by Barry Stringfellow

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Tags: surffishing

Places: ma

From October 2003

No place on earth has better surf fishing than Martha's Vineyard. From May through November, surf casters flog these 125 miles of shoreline and catch stripers of 50 pounds and more.

To the uninitiated, surf fishing looks like a terribly inefficient way to catch fish. It is. You can spend an entire night and get only one strike, or none. Some surf casters fish a lifetime and don't catch a striped bass.

Surf fishing here started centuries ago when the Wampanoags speared the abundant sturgeon and striped bass. The fishermen would lie naked in the damp sands at night, and wake to the sounds of leaping baitfish.

The sturgeon is long gone. But the striper is a living sign that man can stop before it's too late. A total fishing moratorium in 1984 saved Morone saxatilis, then at dangerously low levels, from extinction. Now strict size and limit numbers exist. Locals practice zero tolerance. Offenders may be turned in, or they may find their tires mysteriously flat, or both. The people of this island have a deep love for this fish.

I would be going out with local guides, learning the local hot spots, what tides to fish, what lures to use, and how to fish with eels. I'd reached surf-fishing nirvana.

My guide, Bob Fischer, is a soft-spoken man who's pursued the striped bass for close to 30 years. We head for Squibnocket, the extreme southwest curve of the island that juts out into the Atlantic and diverts fish traffic toward shore. We roll over a crest of a dirt road, and before us sits the giant basin of Squibnocket beneath a clear, moonless sky.

"Squibnocket is one big bowl," Bob tells me, "made by a series of smaller bowls. Big fish like to corner small fish in the bowls."

"How big?" I ask.

He grins, measuring his words. "That's hard to say. I let the biggest ones go. The zebras are the biggest breeders. We need them. I only keep fish over 20 pounds and under 50 ... but I've caught much bigger in here."

We see people using live eels, with green phosphorescent glowsticks tied to the end of their rods. From the comfort of their tents, they'll watch for the glowsticks to rumba in the night sky. A hundred yards offshore, fishermen in Zodiacs prowl the water, scanning the sea with flashlights, stalking their prey like commandos on a mission.

After a long trek on deep, slanted gravel, we wade into a tide pool. Bob sets me up with a dark-green lure: "Dark night, dark lure; bright night, bright lure."

Bob casts effortlessly, with an efficient whip of the wrist. Within 10 minutes he hooks a nice adolescent striper, around 26 inches. (The average 8-year-old striper is about 32 inches.) "They're out there," he says, unhooking the fish and watching it swim away in a highly piqued froth. "Your turn."

My exuberant cast goes 10 feet. The lure snaps off and sails at least 100 feet. In the excitement of Bob's catch, I've twisted my line at the rod tip. Bob stoically takes my line and ties on another leader and lure. We fish for an hour with no mishaps and no talking. Just the gently breaking waves, the clopping of rocks in the receding wash, and occasional distant geese. A mist rolls in.

"Let's work some other bowls," Bob says. We walk, passing other fishermen, wraithlike in the distant heavy air. Bob stops to talk to an elderly man. He hasn't had a hit all night.

"They call it fishing," he says. "They don't call it catching."

We fish. It's a long night of casting and retrieving. But no catching. Three hours later my back is screaming to surrender, and Bob suggests we call it a night. I don't argue with either of them.

My first visit to Chappaquiddick -- the island on the island, serviced by America's shortest ferry ride. My guide, Paul Schultz, is the leader of the Surf Fishing Safari offered by The Trustees of Reservations (one of the nation's oldest conservation groups, caretakers of some of the most pristine tracts in Massachusetts). Paul's truck is equipped to take up to eight people, but I have Paul to myself. My optimism soars.

Paul has lived in Edgartown since 1962, in his grandmother's house, where his mother was born. He's kept a journal—weight, location, tide, time,bait -- of every fish he's caught since coming home from Vietnam. I ask Paul his total number of entries. "About 6,500, give or take a few. About 4,500 blues, 1,300 stripers, and the rest bonito, false albacore, Spanish mackerel, and weakfish."

At Wasque Point, the southeasternmost corner of Chappaquiddick, the Atlantic Ocean and Nantucket Sound meet, creating currents so strong that swimming is prohibited. Stripers, with their strong, broomlike tails, thrive in rough waters. So does the muscular bluefish. Paul hands me a rod and reel rigged with a plug -- a simple, almost primitive white lure with treble hooks on the end. "I caught three bluefish here yesterday," he says.

I start lashing the turbulent water with renewed optimism. I get good distance with my casts, but nothing else.

"Let's head to Cape Poge and work the Elbow," Paul says, after a fruitless two hours.

At Chappy's northeast tip lies a long thin strip of land that eventually curves southward and almost completely encircles Cape Poge Bay. As we bounce northward, Paul watches the ocean to the right and the bay to the left. He reads the water for signs of fish. Birds are the aerial reconnaissance of surf fishermen. But there are more subtle signs as well. He sees a slick. Bluefish, the greasy cousin of the striped bass, leave slicks on the water as distinct as the spots your uncle's hair tonic left on the couch every Thanksgiving.

I ask Paul why he sniffs the air.

"When you smell watermelon, or Juicy Fruit gum, that means bluefish. Some people say stripers smell like thyme," he adds, unconvinced.

After a few uneventful casts at a slick, we move on. Paul points to the site where he caught his biggest Derby bluefish. He recalls its size with the pride and certainty of a parent: "16.36 pounds, caught it in 1995." His biggest striped bass is 56.5 pounds, and he's caught five in the fifties, a revered benchmark for locals. (The striper record for a rod and reel is 73 pounds.)

We see a cluster of baitfish popping out of the water, about 30 yards offshore. My first cast is a nervous one, and I miss badly, failing to account for the quartering wind. I sense Paul's anxiety when I miss a second time. My third cast drops perfectly past the frenetic patch. I reel my lure through the action, braced for a strike. But nothing hits -- or so I think. I have caught something. An infant bluefish, three inches long, has struck a lure nearly twice its size. I have to admire the brashness of this kid.

So far I've fished over 15 hours, in some of the most ideal conditions I've ever seen. And my only strike is from a bluefish with a Napoleon complex. I ask Paul where the stripers are.

"The water's too warm. They really start hitting when the water hits 54 degrees." It's 59 degrees. But luck can change in an instant—and a day in Chappaquiddick's white sands and blue water is a day to be savored.

We work our way along the inside of the elbow. A fast-moving shadow of fish churns quickly up the shoreline. (The shadow itself appears in the shape of a fish, making me wonder if I watched too many cartoons in my youth.) Paul quickly removes my plug and replaces it with a jig, a thin silver lure about four inches long. "Those are bonito, go get one." For the first time, my casting is impeccable. But nothing hits.

"Let's try South Beach. I heard they got some blues there earlier today," Paul says.

As we head for South Beach in Edgartown, the skies quickly cloud, and the wind starts blowing strong and cold out of the east.

"That's a good wind, it blows the baitfish closer to shore," Bob says, watching a distant gaggle of birds swoop on the bay, well out of our casting range.

Again, we fish heavy surf. Again, nothing hits our lures. "If you want," Paul says as we drive back to the Chappy ferry, "I'll take you to the Gut tomorrow night and teach you how to throw an eel."

The setting sun lashes the sky with tongues of orange as we drive south on the beach road. Paul caught seven bluefish earlier in the day: seven more journal entries. My journal is still blank. Paul is optimistic about the approaching storm. "I've caught my best fish on the worst nights," he says.

On the dunes we run into quite a few people who want to pick Paul's brain. He gives ambiguous answers -- it is, after all, Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby month. We pull away; they follow. After 15 minutes of cat-and-mouse in the dunes, we lose our tail. "You get too many people at the Gut," Paul says, "and it messes everything up." During Derby month -- the Super Bowl of the island fishing community -- no fisherman is above subterfuge. "I know people who caught fish at the Gut and then drove 20 miles to Squibnocket and put them on display," Paul says, grinning.

At the Gut, the water is boiling with fish! Splashes of all sizes, some astonishingly large, are erupting everywhere. Paul shows me the technique for hooking an eel, the favorite meal of the striped bass. As I wade in, phosphorescent plankton (Noctiluca) sparks like fireflies with every step. After a long stroll in waist-deep water, I cast into the deep current.

And nothing happens. Again and again.

Hours pass in the starry darkness. I hear fish everywhere. They taunt me, breaking the water all around me. They even bump into me, nearly scaring me out of my waders.

A chilling northwest wind blows in menacing clouds. My hands barely function in the numbing cold.

"Anything?" asks Paul. He's been working the shore about 100 yards away. We haven't spoken a word in hours.

"Not a damn thing."

"Wanna call it?" he asks, as drops of rain start hitting my face. Another zebra splashes in the darkness.

"How about five more casts?"

"Fine by me." He heads to shore, Noctiluca sparking as he walks.

The ocean starts shoving me around. Flashes of lightning add to the storm's bombast. Muttering at the stingy sea, I finally get a hard tug. I let the line go, slowly count to 10, and set the hook with a hard yank. My rod is instantly parabolic. The drag whines and my heart races.

But after a few seconds of fury, the line goes slack. An hour later, we exit the water. The howling wind drowns out our voices; we're reduced to sign language. I arrive home at 2:00 a.m., still without a fish.

My last day is like the day I arrived -- unseasonably warm and cloudless. The ocean breathes in gentle swells. For the first time in a week, I see some leaping baitfish.

A good sign? Who knows. You can study the water and the tides and the winds and the water temperature, and probably improve your odds. But the fact remains, we never know when the fish will show up, or if they'll be hungry when they do.

Ten days of fishing and the only thing I've caught is a sinus infection. I have never spent more time fishing with less result.

I can't wait to come back again.