My saltwater experience had consisted entirely of a few childhood years spent (or misspent) living near South Padre Island and a single wading photography session on the Puget Sound. So when some of the Orvis gang asked if I’d be interested in being part of their team for a fly-fishing tournament on Martha’s Vineyard the obvious answer, of course, was yes.
So I packed my bags, took out a loaner 9-weight from the Orvis rod shop, and pointed the Suby southeast, envisioning warm sandy beaches and getting a good tan in a tank top.
I began to have the bad feeling I underpacked on the ferry ride from Wood’s Hole to the Vineyard, when I pulled out every layer I had packed and, various jacket hoods up, toasted the trip with fellow Orvis-ites Jackie and Pete. They had, ingeniously, packed flasks full of vodka and cranberry juice, and we started the weekend right with Cape Codders (which I had never heard of before) as the sun set over the Atlantic.
We met with Tom, another Orvis crew member, on the island and after a gear-laying-out session and two hours of sleep, bundled up and headed out. Aron Cascone and his dad Todd, both Rhode Island-based guides, joined the gang. That was to be the pattern for the week.
Fish.
Manage gear.
Fish.
Eat.
Fish.
Sleep (on the beach or, for a few hours, in a bed.)
Fish.
Hike to a fishing spot.
Fish.
The first sunrise on the island was some kind of awesome. As a mountain kid, the ocean is a whole new playground, and watching the sun highlight the fog over the water was something I won’t soon forget. Jackie took the first fish of the weekend (just below), followed quickly by Pete.
I, on the other hand, was figuring out how to manage camera gear, a stripping basket and a rod that was four weights heavier than what I’m used to. The learning curve aside, things slowly started to come together, and the morning hours blurred into the waves at my waist, the steady motion of strip-strip-strip, and double-hauls.
After a late morning spent chatting and hanging out at Coop’s Bait and Tackle, a place I had heard tales of and was eager to explore, Todd, Aron, Jackie and I geared up and drove to Eel Pond. Despite the name, I soon discovered Eel Pond was a veritable candy land of flats with clear water.
Bliss.
The idea of wading out hundreds of yards from shore in saltwater—where a lot of stuff lives—was a new experience for me, and, stepping foot in the water, I knew it was game over. Saltwater was now a reality for me, and one I rather liked. I saw movement forty or so feet out and, hoping it was a striper, cast to it. What the hell, right? Movement is movement. The cast landed right where I wanted it and I immediately tucked the rod under my arm and began stripping quickly. The shape turned, followed… and took. I set, my fears that I would automatically trout set allayed as the strip set felt natural.
And, as cliche as it is, there was the tug.
He took it and ran, zipping out, to the right, and then veering wildly to the left, where Jackie was fishing. The striper ran nearly to her feet before swinging back right. We played a bit, and then he came to hand. I grinned stupidly, picking up my first saltwater fish (and first bass). For a trout girl, the idea of lipping a fish is totally foreign, and actually pretty damn fun.
I picked up the striper and looked down into his eye. First thought? What a pretty fish. I’ve been fortunate enough to chase some new species in my five-month new adventure with Orvis, but this was one for the books. Jackie took a quick picture and he went back in the water, back into the weeds and clear, clear salt. I stood there shaking, giddy, and watched him go.
Saltwater fishing. I liked it.
I caught two more fish in the pond; one more sight casting and one just blindly prospecting. As we all gathered up on shore, a cute guy wandered up and said, “You were killing it out there.”
It was a comment I’d take for my first saltwater fish.
We scouted for the rest of the evening, fishing as we went. Intrepid Aron planned an all-night excursions to the far side of Menemsha Pond; hoping he could find a route to a promising looking beach. When we reconvened in the morning, he reported he had found it — fish were popping all over, making the mile hike in through a marsh worth it.
He also encountered a very angry, hissing osprey but that’s a story for another day.
Saturday was the tournament day. We gathered gear and rested a bit in the morning, discussing strategy and plotting for the night. The wind was ominously picking up out of the northeast; a trend that would continue throughout the evening and the night.
The tournament officially ran from 7PM to 2AM, but we began the hike into Aron’s newly-discovered spot around 5PM. The group trekked through marshy bog and stagnant water, finally ducking through brush and emerging onto a beach on Menemsha Pond with a promising-looking bottleneck that looked to be just right as the tide changed in the middle of the night. The “Menemsha Death March,” as it was christened, appeared to have been worth the trek.
We found a home base, dropped of the backpacks and, at 7PM, started fishing. Aron got into fish quickly—managing to land more than a dozen by the end of the night off the little point. Pete had several as well, and I managed three, catching the last in the pitch black sometime around midnight. With the strong wind we stood backs into the wind, releasing on our backcasts. As we lost the light and, hours later, lost the dim light of the thumbnail moon, the rod seemed to load better and the double haul become even more natural. There was some kind of magic about casting in the pitch black with nothing to see, relying strictly on feel and sound.
It was bitterly cold, and by midnight I was well and truly shivering. I was wearing all the layers i had packed, but lacked any kind of thick down jacket. The water was far warmer than the air, and it was a battle weighing the warmth of the black water versus the cold I knew I would experience when the determined wind nipped over any wet hands or fingers.
Eventually cold and wind combined into a blur, and I simply became too engrossed in fishing to care when things went bump in the night against my legs.
We were, after all, fishing in the same pond part of Jaws was filmed in, and the wreckage of Quint’s boat The Orca lay less than half a mile away.
Red headlamps would pop on now and then, a little beacon ensuring that our teammates were still at their posts and were either changing flies or, possibly, had a fish on. As the night grew longer however, it seemed every time a light went on it was to change flies, hoping something new would work, and fewer fish were caught.
At 1AM, with one more hour to go, Pete, Jackie and I hiked to a small bridge, hoping stripers would be gathered there and it would be easy pickings. Hiking out in the dark was a good way to warm up; horseshoe crabs skittered out of our way and baitfish glinted in the dark. As we neared the bridge we slowed down to listen.
Slurp.
Splash.
Slop.
They were here.
Jackie crept over to the bridge and began casting. And, with a strong cast, promptly landed a nice striper. Pete and Jackie stayed on one side; I hiked over to the other and slid down some rocks to gain access. It was blind casting under a small, narrow bridge, and I lost more flies than I’d like to admit trying to angle in around the rocks. Despite the continued feeding, neither Pete or I managed to hook up. No matter what fly we tied on, the fish were having none of it.
And I was ready to start banging my head on the slick boulder I kept nearly sliding off of.
Around 2:30AM, Aron and Todd’s headlamps could be seen emerging from the bog, and by 3:30 we were on the road back to the house.
Breakfast and the awards ceremony were at 8AM, and were excited to learn that our team, the High Stickers, took third. The weather had been no one’s friend, and it was a slow night all around; the school cafeteria was filled with blurry-eyed anglers seeking more coffee. The same coffee which ran out very early in the game.
After the ceremony, we retired quickly to the house to pack our bags and head out to chase bluefish. Danny; awesome, hilarious Danny from Coop’s Shop, kindly offered to take Pete, Tom, Jackie and I out on his boat (and it was a pretty awesome boat.) I was admittedly a bit trepidacious, having never been out on a fishing boat in saltwater. Danny and hard-working mate Donald showed us an incredible time. Jackie and Pete both took in one bluefish each and, while I didn’t hook up, it was incredible to cast a 10-weight from a rolling boat to fish. I found myself mending (force of habit) which Pete grinningly called me out on. Mending doesn’t work so well on the ocean situation.
We all got very quiet at one point as a largish fin appeared about a hundred yards from the boat. Danny quickly declared it was a sunfish, apparently relatively rare in the Cape. It was incredible and rather humbling to see a fish like that, even from a distance. At one point I climbed up into the flying bridge with the camera and watched blues chase poppers, awed by the ecosystem that lives beneath the waters.
At the close of the day, Danny piloted us to a dock at Wood’s Hole, back on the mainland. We grabbed our gear—duffles, stripping baskets, backpacks and rods and jumped up onto the wood, immediately missing the roll of the sea beneath our feet. Somehow stepping back on shore, back on the mainland, was a hard way to come back to reality. We had been living on fishing time—where sleep and food and work somehow didn’t matter—and the world became ruled by double hauls, sand eel patterns and hands cut from stripping line.
I’m already looking forward to my next taste of saltwater, rod in hand.
I’ve decided I liked the ocean. It’s humbling—makes me feel small, kind of like the mountains of home. This was a taste of an entirely new world, one I have the feeling will stay with me and tempt me for the rest of my life.
