Scott's Fish

When a big fish is on the line, landing it becomes the most important thing in the world. This is why I found myself swimming facedown in Long Island Sound the other day, kicking with my feet, holding a throbbing fishing rod aloft and hoping to make it across the channel before my lungs gave out. Let me explain.

Scott had given up.

Scott is my 14 year old cousin, a great kid, usually cheerful as can be, but now he sat glumly on the breakwater, his fishing pole abandoned on the rock behind him. At 6 am Scott had been the most energetic of my five cousins, all of whom woke up at dawn to come fishing. He barely stopped casting long enough to eat a breakfast donut. But that was over two hours ago, in which time we had landed exactly zero fish.

The five of us had fished all the way out to the lighthouse at the end of the breakwater. Here's a satellite photo of the Fenwick side of the Connecticut river mouth. The breakwater we were fishing from forms the left side of the channel.


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Now, I need to describe the layout of the rocks around the lighthouse. Picture a cane with a curved handle, shaped like an upside down “J”. Most of the breakwater runs in a straight line out from the beach – the shaft of the cane. The lighthouse sits on a concrete platform at the very end of the breakwater – the topmost part of the cane. The curve of the cane is a little trail of rock that extends from the far side of the lighthouse platform opposite the main part of the breakwater, forming a pocket of sheltered water about 30 feet wide at the base of the lighthouse – the space between the curve and the shaft of the cane. You can see the lighthouse and breakwater in the satellite photo below.


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Still with me? OK! On to the story.

While Scott sat on the rock behind me, I made a cast from the breakwater that landed off the rocks at the far side of the lighthouse. I was using a jointed plug that wiggled through the water like a wounded baitfish, irresistible to any big bluefish cruising the waters of the river mouth. Sure enough, a big blue made a pass at the plug during the retrieve, and a shot of adrenaline coursed through my veins.

“Cast off that point,” I told Scott. “There’s a fish in there with your name on it.”

He jumped to his feet, the spark back in his eyes, and made a perfect cast that splashed down just past the end of the rocks. One heartbeat, two, three – then BOOM! The bluefish slammed his lure like an exploding depth charge and took off for Plum Island.

Scott had set the drag with just the right amount of tension, but this was a big fish and it took a lot of line before he could begin reeling it in. The fish was way out in open water, and made a run around the back of the lighthouse. The line wrapped around the point and began chafing on the rocks.

“Make it turn! Make it turn!” I shouted.

“I can’t stop it!” Scott yelled.

This was a problem. If Scott kept reeling, the line would break against the rocks. Even if he ran up to the lighthouse the angle would only become more acute and the fish would break off for sure.

We were not going to lose this fish. There was only one thing to do, and no time to waste.

“Give me the rod,” I told Scott as I stripped off my pants and shirt. “Run over to the end of the point and wait for me there.”

I needed to free the line from the rocks and get a clear angle for Scott to land the fish. The only way to do that was to bring the rod across the still water, and the only way to do that was by swimming. I jumped into the Sound, held the rod up high and started kicking, reeling up slack as I went. A couple of minutes later I had closed the gap. Miraculously, the fish was still on. I handed the rod up to Scott, who swung the line clear of the rocks and started reeling like mad.


It took another 15 minutes to land the fish, and when Scott finally pulled it onto the rocks the hook was barely attached to its jaw. It was so heavy we took turns carrying it down the breakwater and back to the house.

(Photos by Ari Kessler

Bluefish

There are two kinds of sport fish here at the mouth of the Connecticut river - striped bass and bluefish. Stripers live right up against the rocks of the breakwater and emerge to feed at dawn and dusk. They act surprised and indignant when hooked; some fight hard, for a little while, but they tend to give up easily. I always feel a little bad when I unhook stripers and I don't like to kill them. The look in their eyes is one of dumb innocence betrayed.



Bluefish are different. Bluefish fight with vicious fury, snapping at the wire leader and ripping line off the reel. They hunt in packs, slicing through the ocean in tight formation and tearing apart schools of baitfish. Striped bass are like big, goofy Golden retrievers; bluefish are saltwater wolves, built for speed and murder. I admire bluefish, and I kill them.



Bluefish never come in easy, but when I finally bring the fish close, I haul it onto the rocks, keeping my fingers clear of the jaws. Then I find a piece of driftwood and beat it over the head until its skull is crushed and the whole body shivers violently. I run the stick through the gills and out the mouth and carry it back down the beach. There's no better feeling in this world than cresting the dune on the path home at dusk, my arm starting to ache from the weight of a big fish, its tail dragging a path through the sand. Back home there are ooos and aahs, and I take the bluefish out into the yard, scale it with a sharp knife, slit the belly and cut big thick filets. My Dad bakes the filets in the oven with olive oil and lemon juice and we eat the fresh, strong-flavored meat with green beans and corn on the cob.

Fenwick: Golf, Fishing and Family on the Connecticut Coast

Here's a photo of the Connecticut license plate:



Here's a photo of the view from my bedroom in the summer cottage here in Fenwick, where the Connecticut River meets Long Island Sound:



My family moved from Connecticut to Vermont when I was 11 years old. The identity of "home" was always a contentious issue for me; in college, friends would tease me about being from Connecticut, while I insisted I was from Vermont. Now, having lived in Hokkaido, Massachusetts and Cambodia, the concept of home is a little looser, and I'm comfortable with a broad definition. "Where are you from?" is a silly question, after all - there are several places where I feel at home, some oceans apart, and the idea of one specific home is ultimately a self-limiting and artificial construct.

....

An ancestor bought this cottage back in the 1920s, when the spit of land at the mouth of the River called Fenwick was beginning to develop into an enclave of privilege, a summer retreat for wealthy insurance executives from Hartford. Now, our cottage is one of the last original structures in Fenwick. Almost nothing about this house has changed since I was a child. The same dusty books are on the shelves, the same rusty bikes are parked in the garage, the same painting hangs over the fireplace - an oil of frontiersmen about to open fire on a war party of Indians. Most of the old cottages have been torn down by new owners set on building ostentatious McMansions. I'm sort of proud that ours is so weathered and worn - the wooden floorboards in the attic are smooth as polished marble from four generations of children playing hide and seek before bed, and the shower is still out in the garage, so that everyone walks barefoot across the yard in the morning with only a towel for modesty.

I don't quite feel comfortable with the atmosphere of privilege here - last year, when I came to Connecticut for my Grandfather's funeral, I biked to the tackle shop in town and asked what bait they recommended for the breakwater that leads out to the outer lighthouse, the one featured on the license plate.

"How do you have access down there?" asked the bait-man.

I thought about it for a second - there was really only one answer:

"My granddad's rich," I said.

Everyone cracked up, and they gave me good advice. If I'd said something like - "Oh, my family has a cottage..." they probably would have sold me expensive, useless plugs instead of hooking me up with Slug-Gos and live eels, the cheap stuff that really works.

The fishing is what I really love about this place. Big striped bass live in the rocks of the breakwater and in late summer when the bluefish start to run you can catch hard-fighting fish from shore in the evenings. I've settled into an easy routine - waking up at dawn, fishing from the breakwater as the sun rises over Long Island Sound, coming home for coffee and breakfast with Mom and Dad, writing until lunch-time, when I take a siesta, waking up in time to fish the evening tide. While I write, on the porch, I can watch ospreys flying by with snapper bluefish in their talons, and the masts of sailboats motoring upriver seem to pass right through the dune-grass of the front yard.

I haven't had much luck the past few days - I hooked up with big fish a few times, but didn't manage to land any. Last night, though, I was fishing a popper with a heavy wire leader along the breakwater and caught two big stripers, one right after another. They both came up and murdered the lure at the surface, and I made sure to set the drag loose enough for them to make their runs without breaking off. It took about 10 minutes to land each one of them, and I had to balance on slippery rocks to hoist them onto the breakwater. The first measured out at 27 inches - the second was over 30. I tried to take a photo, but it was tricky, as the fish were worn out from the fight and I wanted to release them. It was tough to hold them up at arms length while balanced on the wet rocks, and hold the camera still enough to get a good exposure in lowlight. Here's the best shot - of the second fish - maybe you can get a sense of the size.



There's golf here too, which I used to love as a kid but have grown sort of ambivalent about these days. It's one of the oldest courses in America, a nine-hole layout that wraps around houses and roads, so that when you're driving through Fenwick you need to watch out for golf balls. A church by the first fairway is right in the line of fire, so balls bang off the roof during the Sunday service. It's nice how the course is so social - playing the other afternoon, I ran into four cousins and a bunch of old friends - on their way to the tennis court, heading home from the beach, or just cruising around on bikes and in golf carts.

I'm here until the end of August. It's home - for now. Then I'll go back to Vermont, which is home too, and then I'll have home strapped to the back of my bike, riding up the St. Lawrence seaway. Home for the winter will be somewhere I've yet to discover, way down south in Patagonia.

It's way too soon to settle down.