The bluefin bite was as perfect as I had ever seen it.
Thirty- to 6o-pound fish were so close to shore I could have paddled a kayak to reach them. The seas were flat, the wind was light, and the fish ate any fly landing within 10 feet. My back liked the fact that I didn’t have to log countless hours on the pounding sea looking for them and my wallet breathed a sigh of relief since I could forgo six-buck-a-gallon gas on the docks.
The quarter moon meant the fishing would remain consistently hot for a week. It did for the three consecutive days I was there. I’d catch and release one or two, poke around a bit, and then catch and release one or two more-you know how it goes. After battling these tough fish, I needed a day off so I took it. When I returned, I found nothing. There were no breaks, no tails, no boils, and certainly no fish. They were all gone.
In the Pilgrim State of Massachusetts and the Ocean State of Rhode Island, a few grandfathered permits allow commercial outfits to net tuna and the word about a hot tuna bite close to shore, the same bite I just fished, was the topic of conversations on websites, blogs, online forums, and even in the newspapers. Captains referenced it in code speak on their radios, but make no mistake: the word was out. It just happened the commercial boats arrived and filled their holds with netted fish during my 24-hour sabbatical. Just like that, the tuna bite in this area was over. The fish I released were netted anyway.
Fishing continues as it always does, and I shifted my focus to striped bass and bonito. I caught enough to suit me as a sport fisherman, but it made me question the situation at hand. Where do we stand with the catch-and-release ethic?
It seems that catch and release grew out of centuries of sustenance-fishing pressure from both the recreation and commercial sides. Combined with dams built on rivers for hydro-power and pollution caused by industrialization, fish stocks depleted. The spirit of the 1960s motivated many anglers to follow Lee Wulff’s mantra of “a good game fish is too valuable to be caught once.” The fish that were typically caught for the table lived to be caught another day.
The ideology of catch and release may also have been part of a British Invasion. I’ve heard the movement began across the pond with a group of coarse fishermen who returned their landed carp to avoid overfishing the coveted big-lipped fish. Regardless, we anglers entered a new era of fishing, one that continues to arouse a tremendous amount of heated discussion to this day. It’s evolved to a point where often, if an angler kills a fish, there is a public outcry.
Perhaps the boundaries of catch and release blur because what was once an ethic now carries legal implications. Take the striped bass, for example. In my home state of Massachusetts, the legal length for keeping a striped bass is 28 inches. You can keep two fish per day for table fare. If an angler kills his two bass, he may continue to fish provided he releases all other fish. These are Massachusetts’ rules, and when I run my boat across state lines, there are different rules to follow. When the commercial side says a species is “recovered” and the recreational side says it’s not, then a moderator needs to make a call that is fair and equitable to both sides. My vote? A single policy that protects breeding fish would be a good idea, but that’s a different subject.
Anglers test the ethics of catch and release every June when the sand eels arrive. This long, thin baitfish moves onto the flats, along the beaches, and into the coves in virtual abundance. Bass go on the feed in skinny water, but they don’t crush and swallow the baitfish headfirst like they do pogeys or buckeyes. Instead, they inhale the entire water column and the fish, purging water through their gills and swallowing the bait whole. Stripers constantly repeat this behavior because they not only get a meal, but they also get an incredible shot of oxygen before pursuing dessert.
Flyrodders catch these bass by mimicking the bait with small patterns. Unfortunately, stripers suck in the flies with such force the hooks frequently stick in the fish’s gills (and it happens a lot with small, top-water patterns). The fish bleeds, no matter how carefully an angler extracts a hook and releases the fish, and fish frequently turn belly up.
In this instance, the legal law is quite different from moral and ethical law, because a conflict stems from releasing a sub-legal fish knowing it’s going to die. Releasing a mortally wounded fish, particularly those that make such excellent table fare, makes about as much sense as socks on a rooster, but by doing so, we follow Johnny Law’s rules. There is some comfort knowing the crabs, eels, and lobsters feast well that night, but the real question is, can we find a balance between the legal law and an ethical law? Is there a catch-and-release middle ground?
The Swiss took a stab at this very dilemma. They decided that fighting and releasing fish was torturous and immoral. So, beginning in 2009, the law required anglers to properly dispatch any Swiss fish caught. In addition, the law set specific limits by species, and if someone reached the bar for a particular species game over, pack up and go home.
This year, Canada took a different approach when responding to poor Atlantic salmon return rates. In order to improve egg deposition in the Northwest Miramichi and Little Southwest Miramichi rivers, the lower portion of the Little River and up to and including Catamaran Brook and all tributaries on the system became mandatory catch-and-release until July 31st, for the next three seasons. I wonder if the netters at the mouth of the river have any thoughts on the subject?
Conservation is critical to our way of fishing. While A River Runs Through It increased fly-fishing participation, conservation created the initial wave of interest several years earlier. In the 1980s, blackened redfish was on the menu from five-star gourmet affairs to fish shacks. Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) efforts in Florida resulted in the restoration of the species. The same holds true for striped bass along the Eastern Seaboard. Some fish die upon release, but all fish die when we don’t.
Many outstanding U.S. fisheries developed from contaminated watersheds. Some of the best trout fishing in the Northeast is on catch-and-release stretches, and these stretches were previously closed due to high levels of mercury and PCBs deposited by upstream factories. Mandatory catch and release works for increasing fish stocks, but plan on burgers for dinner.
When Peter Harrison caught a world-record steelhead on Feb. 20, 2009 onWashingtonState’sHohRiver, the certified weight was 29.5 pounds. He dispatched the fish in keeping with the state’s one-fish law. A year and a half later, on June 25, 2010, someone caught a state-record steelhead in Ohio. Jason “J.W.” Brooks’ 21.3-pound Lake Erie fish edged out the previous state record by a third of a pound, and he also dispatched the fish, legally. Harrison took more grief from the masses over killing his fish, while Brooks became a hero. Jim Holland, Jr.’s 2001 world-record 202.5-pound tarpon and the accompanying photo of the behemoth hanging from a scale on a tree brought a similarly mixed message to his doorstep. And with dwindling brood stocks of the biggest, most-thriving specimens in clear decline among native steelhead and striped bass populations, it’s not hard to see why.
Are catch-and-keep anglers heroes or villains? Depends which side of the argument you’re on. Some anglers are proud they “haven’t killed a fish in 20 years.” Others aren’t afraid to put a meal on the table.
Most fishermen want legendary encounters, and the fish caught by Harrison, Brooks, and Holland, Jr., provided an out-of-body experience. By keeping their catch, I hope they can savor the moment time and time again. Maybe that’s what we need to draw more blood into this sport’s dwindling ranks. Maybe loosening up our thinking would lead to more out-of-body fishing experiences.
Fellow anglers who keep fish aren’t the sole problem. Commercial fishermen aren’t the sole problem, either. Maybe the blame for decreasing fish stocks rests on the refrigerator/freezer that decommissioned the 1900s salt works and canneries and made fish preservation universal. Perhaps the solution is to return to the traditional Native American ethic of “harvest only what you can eat.” If we didn’t have freezers to fill, wouldn’t the problem solve itself? There would be no need for catch and release, and there would be no need for slot or size limits on striped bass. What we would have is a self-regulating system that follows natural order.
Catch and release makes us feel good about helping our fisheries. That said, many of us like to eat fish, and when we catch a particularly big one, we might want to hang it on the wall. “Limit your kill, don’t kill your limit” seems about right. It’s close enough to the Native American attitude to work. Maybe this is the middle ground that will help us get done with the fightin’ and get on with the fishin’. The fishin’ is a lot more fun.
Parts of our country are a natural fit for game birds and bird dogs.
Richmond County, North Carolina, is one of them. Robert Ruark, widely known for a career of outstanding writing including The Old Man and the Boy, worked as a newspaper stringer in the town of Hamlet. The nearby town of Hoffman is the home of the J. Robert Gordon Sandhills Field Trial Ground, a 58,000 acre tract of longleaf pines, lovegrass, and a bobwhite quail course.
For decades, some of the most famous bird dogs have run the course, and many a young pup has come into his own here. Even New Englander Corey Ford headed to North Carolina in the winter when his grouse and woodcock coverts were frozen solid. Richmond County is more coastal plains than Piedmont which makes it to birds and bird dogs as George’s Bank is to fish and fishermen.
I had come to the town of Ellerbe to visit my wife’s family, which is big enough for me to wish that they all wore numbered jerseys and that I had a team roster. On this February trip we kept dinner to a short list of Uncle Herbert, Aunt Annette, and Pastor Wayne, another uncle. After dinner we headed across town to visit with our good friend Bill Webb, who was going to let us run our setters on his farm.
The best way to describe Bill Webb is to borrow the description usually reserved for Mark Twain; “known to everyone, like by all.” He’s a lawyer by trade. A long time ago, Bill’s grandparents raised peaches, tobacco and a wide variety of crops that ranged from sweet potatoes to peanuts. Through traditional farming practices Bill has transformed the farm, and created a quail Valhalla in the process. There are coveys of wild birds scattered throughout the fields of Egyptian wheat, milo, wiregrass, broomsedge, Johnsongrass, and bicolor lespedeza. The Webb Farm is so perfect it causes the heart of even the most discriminating quail hunter to flutter.
At the Webb Farm there are dogs, lots of dogs. Most are muscular pointers but there are setters, too. Head guide and dog trainer Wade Meachum trains them all, and he comes by his love of bird dogs honestly. His father, in addition to being the pastor of the Methodist Church was a renowned bird dog man. That meant when Pastor Meachum stepped into the pulpit on Sunday mornings it was common for parishioners to hear a sermon liberally sprinkled with bird dog, quail, and gunning references.
When W.H. Auden said, “in times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag,” I am positive he was describing my wife perfectly when she met Albert, an English Setter, during our visit. Albert was Bill’s stately five-year-old tricolor, and he could barely walk. A torn ligament in his front leg confined him to hobbling about in a knee-to-foot cast. It’s always a difficult decision of what to do when a working dog comes up lame, but in this case Albert was well cared for by Bill and Wade.
It’s a good thing my wife doesn’t play poker because she’d lose every hand she was dealt. It was all over but the shouting when she laid eyes on old Albert. There are points in life that just stand out from all others, and this was one of them. Angela was smitten.
That feeling is probably what prompted Bill to recommend that we bring Albert home to Massachusetts, and expose him a softer, gentler life. Bill thought it might be good if Albert enjoyed the cool ocean breezes in the summer, and became part of a covert rotation for grouse in the uplands and for woodcock in the lowlands. We could return in the winter for bobwhite. Compared to the long days that he’d become accustomed to, Albert would a dog of leisure.
I was flattered by Bill’s generosity. What a kind thing to offer, and it made some sense. Then I ran some quick numbers. Two female setters, two heat cycles each per year, three weeks at a clip and it all adds up to 12 weeks of madness. With a busy career and two kids in middle school the last thing I needed was to spend a Friday nigh apologizing to the neighbors for a dog barking non-stop. It’d be easier to breed our dogs with someone else’s male and forgo the stress and strain. Call me a stick in the mud, but I said no. We went on with the hunt and had a great time. And while nobody said boo about my decision, I could tell that there was a pall in the air.
A few months passed and Bill called with an update. The vet had give Albert a clean bill of health. His cast was removed and the new project for Bill and Wade was to rehabilitate old Albert. The setter was six years old now and, since he was hobbling, they started with short conditioning sessions which involved a lot of swimming in the ponds. Bringing him back was a slow project, but after being cooped with a cast in the kennel Albert was a good student and happy to be liberated.
While Albert was rehabilitating in Ellerbe, North Carolina, there was a parallel change and development going on in our Massachusetts home. My daughter Morgan had taken quite a liking to bird hunting. Her interest piqued in the summer when I began working out the dogs for upcoming season. Morgan was fourteen, a perfect time to get fully involved. She joined me in working them out three times a day, cooling them off in the ponds, and feeding and grooming them. Our dogs were seasoned veterans, and it was a good place for her to start learning.
In October we went to our New Hampshire grouse and woodcock coverts. Every weekend, Morgan was awake and ready in the predawn darkness way before her alarm clock rang. She neither complained about the challenges of a grouse and woodcock covert, nor bemoaned water going over the top of her boots while fording a seep. She remembered her riding gloves for when the temperatures dropped and an extra pair of socks when her feet got wet. She fit her hunters’ safety course in after soccer practice and before homework, and by the end of the season she had borrowed one of her mom’s shotguns to carry unloaded through the woods. Some more practice on a skeet field and she was good to go.
All the while there was something that kept nagging at me. Truth be told, I liked Albert too. He was growing on me. I wouldn’t say that I was sold on the idea, but I wasn’t as closed off to it either. Maybe that’s all it took, seeing him one time. Maybe Albert was just that kind of dog.
Well, grouse and woodcock season ended up north and in December we were ready to head back to North Carolina. We decided that Morgan was going to accompany us on her first quail hunt. I thought she’d enjoy hunting with Bill and Wade, and take special comfort in hunting an area where her family grew up. She’d get to see a professional kennel with dozens of dogs, and different breeds, too. I figured she’d enjoy hunting without getting all tangled up, and bombing around in a quail wagon is always great fun. Within a half hour of arriving she asked to see the famous Albert that her mom raved about.
Bill and Wade introduced Morgan to Albert. He was fit and trim, moving all around and wagging his tail. Setters as a breed are biddable dogs, and he was happy to get a pat. Maybe he was thinking that he was going to load up and go hunting. Or maybe he had a good sense about Morgan.
Like bees and honey, peas and carrots, and cookies and milk, so it was with Morgan and Albert. Morgan loves dogs, but there was something about old Albert that just clicked. It was love at first sight, just like it had been with Angela.
A little time passed fussing over the dog before we regrouped to hunt some birds. I had loaded our dogs into the kennels on the mule and Wade added a few of his pointers and his favorite Irish lab, Finn. Then I surprised even myself and said, “I’d love to see Albert work. Can we take him out this morning?”
“Albert? He’s already loaded up. It’s his day to work.”
When Wade smiled I laughed. What are the odds of our arriving on a day when it was Albert’s turn to run? Clearly it was my lucky day, and I vowed to buy a lottery ticket on the way home. I just knew I would win big.
Bill let us put our dogs down first. They found and pointed a bunch of birds. The heat was about 45 degrees warmer than what they were used to, and after an hour they started to tire. We watered them, and it was Albert’s turn. He was paired with a good looking all white setter named Bubba. They worked well as a team, and I watched closely as Albert worked the fields. His focus was sharp, his drive was intact, and he put on a half dozen miles of running without so much as a limp. I liked the way he quartered, he was patient around birds, and his points were staunch. All of Bill and Wade’s dogs are good, and Albert was really good.
After our hunt, Bill pulled me aside and asked again if I would like to take Albert home. It was a cause for celebration when I said yes.
I had changed my mind for a variety of reasons. A third dog, and a male, would make life around two unspayed females a ruckus for a few times a year. Retooling vehicles to accommodate additional dogs would be a shift, too. Expanding a kennel would require time that we didn’t have, but we would make it.
What made the decision finally is that faith, hope, and charity overruled logic and practicality. I had faith that when Morgan told me she was going to rise to the challenge and take total care of Albert that she would follow through. She was like her mom, committed, and for me that was a conviction without fact.
I had hope. I tossed out any of the doubts or worries that come from another dog because I knew that after the initial adjustment everything would work out just fine. People don’t always get what they want, but they get what they need. The magic is when what you get what you need which is also what you want. That was the case with Albert.
And that charity didn’t just come from Bill giving Albert to us. It came from his understanding that there was a much bigger purpose at hand. It came from feeling that it wasn’t just the right thing to do – for a girl just getting into bird hunting it was about as warm, generous and joyful a gift as a gift could be. I’m just glad Albert wasn’t a Tennessee walker.
I know I’m not the guy to try and work with old Albert. He’s got a way of doing business just as I have a way of doing business. I don’t have the aptitude to change the old boy from a professional hunting dog who runs 13 miles a day into a house dog who lives in a kennel and hunts aggressively for a few months of the year. That job is best done at the hands of someone far more capable than me, I can think of no one better suited to the task than Morgan.
We left Bill Webb and the farm, and Albert for that matter, too. Not for good, just for a while. We had some prep work to do before bringing Albert home. There was a yard to clear and some land to level. A concrete foundation needed to be poured. We’d need to re-engineer the truck with kennels so that we could accommodate all the dogs.
A dog box would go in Morgan’s room, and there would be new collars to buy. The owner’s name on the brass plate would not be mine. It would be Morgan’s. Well be picking up Albert soon and I can’t wait.
Just under six hours the tide comes in and it’s high tide; just under six hours later it’s low tide and the water disappears. If it weren’t for those few minutes, the tide would be every six hours like clockwork. But it’s not. You could use charts to track its ebb and flood, but the best way is probably just to head to the shore and look.
When the water runs out, the bars show up. To a fisherman, it’s like finding the Lost City of Atlantis. We drop the air pressure in our tires to 12 PSI, shift into 4-low, and run our trucks on the beach as far as we can. I have an old Jeep CJ-5 I use for that very purpose. The frame is rotted out and one time I stuffed my foot through the rusted floor board while stomping the clutch.
I like everything about the beach-the bars, breaks, ocean holes, even the seals. Carole King was probably standing on sand when she wrote about feeling the earth move beneath her feet. I like the birds best-laughing and black-backed gulls, terns picking sandeels from shallows-and sometimes spend hours watching them dive on bait brought to the surface by pods of bass.
The fall is the best time for bird watching when the gannets and shearwaters show-enormous flocks spread out for miles. They fly higher and higher, searching all the while until they tuck their wings and plummet a hundred feet to the ocean below. You’d figure the impact would hit them like a load of high brass 6s, but they have air sacks in their necks and faces to cushion the blow.
On warm summer days the winds blow west-southwest, temperate and welcoming. The cloud ceiling is high, and the eggshell sky is mottled with puffy white cotton balls. Sometimes, when the winds shift, you’ll see mare’s tails splashed around like a painter gone mad. In late summer the wind starts to shift to west-northwest, bringing a Canadian chill-a woodcock wind, and after the ‘doodles move out, the ducks and geese follow.
A soft, southwest wind and dropping tide on a quarter moon makes the ocean lay down-calmer than a bathtub. When you’re on a beach and look out at the horizon, you’d swear it was 5o miles away instead of the eight or nine it really is. Give it a few days; it’ll change. When the winds shift east-northeast–dropping the tide–you wouldn’t be surprised if someone told you the horizon is a mile away, if that. And fortunately, it pushes the fish up the beach, where you’ll see them in the wash right at your feet.
I like to follow the advice of old-time anglers: “Fish points on full and new moons; fish coves on quarters.” Bait stages in coves during half moons and moves on full moons-silversides, sandeels, glass minnows, herring, peanut bunker, anchovies, mullet, and butterfish. Their cycle predicts good fishing. Bass and bluefish lie in wait to pin them against structure, the surface, wherever they can. Anglers just need to get there before the fish.
There are many types of bars, and they change year to year. My favorites are the offshore bars that run parallel to the beach. In the winter, they are meant for surfing, in the summer, fishing. With hard current running on both sides, offshore bars are like small islands, and sometimes the water between the beach and bar is chock-a-block with bass. Other times the fish are on the outside edge. I’ll tug on my wetsuit and paddle out. Surrounded by schools of stripers, I’m reminded of my favorite childhood game: Cowboys and Indians.
Onshore bars connect with the beach. They are far more civilized, requiring nothing more than a long walk. Most run at angles set by the dominant current. I’ll start working out an onshore bar a few hours before low tide, going as far as I can, and then wander back as the tide floods. Sometimes the fish are nowhere to be found, which generally means Land ho! and onto another.
Bull-nose bars look like an upside-downletterU.They’re easy to fish, but often are devoid of life-not reaching far enough into the ocean. Sometimes you’ll find bass and blues in the lee; other times they’re feasting on the windward edge. I always let my first cast sweep over the sand and into deeper water, waiting for the dull tug that will make it worth my while. When fish are tight to the beach, I don’t have to cast much further than my feet.
Few events are as frustrating as watching a large school of bass range just beyond your best cast. A few years back, I watched a desperate angler borrow a kid’s inflatable raft and paddle past the beach break. The cheap plastic bottom tore out before he ever got off a cast, and he returned to shore soaking wet and laughing. Later, I walked him to the bar at the top of the hill and bought us both a whiskey. Any man with guts like that deserves a drink.
From Chatham west you’ll find fast fish on the beaches: bonito, false albacore, Spanish mackerel, and occasionally bluefin tuna that like the warmer,Gulf Streamwater. When I see a school of bonito or albies racing down a beach edge, spraying silversides and anchovies on the drop-off, it’s pure magic. A hooked fish tears away, stops, then races right back, forcing you to back up the beach while reeling-all to keep them from spitting the fly. When one finally hits the sand, it’s cause for celebration.
Just under six hours, the tide comes in and it’s high tide; just under six hours later, it’s low tide and the water disappears. Just ask any angler or surfer-they’ll tell you. Better yet, head out to the beach break and see for yourself. The only way to learn anything about the ocean is to head to the shore and look.
