Lured by the Hunt / The passion for fishing runs deep in the shallows of Gardiners Bay

Jack Otter
STAFF WRITER
Newsday
Long Island, N.Y.
Sep 10, 2000, pg. G.10

AS ALWAYS, David Blinken spots the fish first. From his perch on a platform over the outboard motor, the guide directs the fly fisherman on the bow.

"Bob, give me 11 o'clock at 40 feet, going to 10 o'clock," he says, telling his client where to cast. Twelve o'clock would be straight ahead. It's not easy to see the striped bass, a 3-foot-long teardrop the color of whiskey, moving quickly in 3 feet of crystal clear water over honey-colored sand. "Drop it, DROP IT, strip," Blinken commands. The fly line whooshes overhead, lands in the water and Bob Sullivan manually pulls or "strips" the line to make the fly imitate a scared minnow. The striped bass couldn't care less.

"Pick it up, throw it again, 9 o'clock, strip, strip, STRIP!"

The brown teardrop becomes a brilliant flash of silver as the bass turns its flank to the sun, sucks in the fly and accelerates for deeper water. Sullivan's 9-foot fly rod bends double and these grown men stare in wonder.

Then the rod is straight, the line is limp and the fish is gone. Sullivan had tied the wrong knot, and a striped bass will be swimming around Gardiners Bay for a few days with Blinken's hand-tied fly in its jaw.

Blinken, 39, and Sullivan, who owns a Sag Harbor-based clothing company, have known each other for years, so the guide is smiling as he calls Sullivan names.

"Let's not ---it up again," says Blinken.

"Roger that," says Sullivan, chagrined. But they won't get another chance.

Two experienced fishermen, a $25,000 boat, a $700 rod and reel, four hours on the water and one mistake. No bass today. Welcome to sight fishing, a combination of hunting and fly casting that has challenged anglers in the Florida Keys since the '40s but is just now gaining in popularity on the East Coast.

From specially designed "flats boats" that can float in less than a foot of water, the guide looks for fish feeding in the shallows, or flats. The angler then has just seconds to cast his fly perfectly in front of the wary bass (or bluefish in the North, bonefish, tarpon or permit in Florida), then twitch it like a sand eel, shrimp, crab or baitfish, whatever happens to be the undersea nibble du jour. If the fish is hungry and the twitching is irresistible, you have a fight on your hands. If the line hits the surface too hard, lands in the wrong place, or just isn't appetizing, you watch the fish dart away into the glare.

But like they say, if it were easy, they wouldn't call it fishing. They'd call it catching.

A day on the water with Blinken or the other guides plying Gardiners Bay runs about $400, plus tip. The customer (most are men) wants a sense that he's getting an expert, the best guide on the water, a salty dog who can smell fish a mile away. When the fish aren't biting, a guide must be an entertainer, and each, consciously or not, has developed a shtick that in most cases makes those hours on the water a joy even if the fish aren't cooperating.

The men, and one woman, working the flats have backgrounds as varied as the species they chase. Blinken, who splits his time between East Hampton and Manhattan, attended private schools and started his professional life in the Wall Street job his parents had bred him for. There's a retired city cop, a landscape architect, a doctor's son, a descendant of East Hampton's first settlers and a builder who realized he could turn his hobby into a job.

What they share is a passion for the challenge of calculating tides and temperatures, spotting shadows in the shallows and figuring out how fish think. And the hunt never ends. They'll take clients out all day, then fish on their own half the night.

Exhibit A: Paul Dixon.

Dixon may have the most beautiful office in the world. There is no fluorescent light. There are no walls. The decor is always stunning but it is never, ever, exactly the same as the day before. He is the owner of East Hampton-based To the Point Charters, and his office is wherever the 150-hp. Yamaha outboard catapults his 20-foot Hewes skiff. In the summer, Dixon sees every shade imaginable of blue, green and brown as he cruises Gardiners Bay in search of bass, bonito and false albacore. Dixon's winter colors are the pastels of the Florida Keys, where he works as guide at the Ocean Reef Club, navigating the mangroves and flats in search of bonefish and tarpon. Unlike most of his competitors, Dixon doesn't pound nails, serve rum drinks or work the fishing gear aisle to make ends meet. He is Fishing Inc.

In early August, Dixon, whose home overlooks Gardiners Bay, spent seven days in the hospital recovering from a rare and potentially fatal tick-borne disease called babesiosis. His lungs filled with fluid and his temperature hit 105. Three days after he was released, he was back on the water, in violation of doctor's orders.

"You start to get antsy, you have to get out... or you lose the rhythm of what's going on," he says.

On a recent day so clear you could see a dozen miles to Fishers Island peeking over the horizon, Dixon, 46, explains how he has become one of the most sought-after fishing guides on the East Coast.

Growing up in Newport, Calif., everybody in his family fished, so he learned early. His sun-worn face is proof that he has seen a lot of water, bending a fly rod from Baja to Idaho, where he worked as a freshwater guide for 12 years. His customers tend to be wealthy- Jimmy Buffett and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin among them- and unflaggingly loyal.

"With one snap, Paul can shoot the line 100 feet," says Josh Feigenbaum, president of MJI Broadcasting in Manhattan, referring to Dixon's skill with the fly rod. "He's one of the best." Unlike the more widely used spin casting equipment, which most people can learn to use in a few hours, it takes years of practice to cast a fly with precision and distance. And unlike the aerial ballet of fly line seen in "A River Runs Through It," saltwater flyfishermen don't have the luxury of time. You cast quick or lose your shot.

Dixon is a jaunty fellow, equal parts stevedore and aristocrat, and when he explains how he ended up on the East Coast, it somehow seems appropriate.

"I was in London for the premiere of 'Octopussy,'" the 1983 James Bond flick, he says, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. "My friend said, 'You gotta take this girl to the party.' It was a blind date." He ended up marrying the girl, and she brought him to her parents' estate in Southampton. The marriage has ended, but Dixon stuck around.

"I thought the East was an industrial wasteland," he said. "But after seeing it out here, I said, hey, this is great."

That was 15 years ago, and while working in Manhattan at Orvis, the fly-fishing and sporting clothes emporium, he spent weekends experimenting with his fly rod in Gardiners Bay. He later opened his own Orvis store in East Hampton, and took a winter job guiding in the Keys, where the ghost of Hemingway haunts anglers on the flats.

Up north, the flats fishing was tough at first. He damaged his father-in-law's boat more than once in shallow water. "I probably went three years before I caught a bass." But the beauty of the bay and the thrill of the hunt were all he needed.

"Once you see it, you do it," he said. "You don't care about the other --."

His gray-decked boat is stripped down so there's nothing for the fly line to snag. He steers to a favorite spot a short distance from the beach on Gardiners Island, an improbably beautiful, privately owned paradise between the North and South Forks of 3,300 pristine acres, with nothing but a few historic structures. There are no boats, no people, nothing man-made in sight. When Dixon shuts off the motor, the only sound is the occasional screech of a tern and the bay lapping the rocks on shore. To look over the side of the boat is to peer into another dimension, where sea robins wiggle across the bottom and small sharks glide by. While Dixon propels the boat with a long pole, gondolier-style, and scans the flat for signs of striped bass, the traffic jams of the summertime Hamptons seem very far away.

A young Southampton-based guide, a former employee of Dixon's who still has the wide-eyed wonder of a relative newcomer, can't imagine any other way of hooking fish.

"It's the highest form of fishing there is," says Merritt White, 33, a "local kid" who runs Gunkholin' Charters in Gardiners Bay in summertime and Key West in winter. White, of Bridgehampton, is not bragging; he is worshiping the confluence of geology and biology that has put these noble fish in this beautiful water.

Partly from respect and partly from self interest, most guides discourage people from keeping bass, even when they are above the 28- inch minimum. And most are ardent conservationists-without fish and clean water, they're out of business.

Bob Robl of Dix Hills, one of the few Long Island sight-fishing guides not based on the East End, says after a big rain, runoff from sewage plants in Smithtown Bay sometimes clouds the waters of his hunting grounds. When the water's clear, however, he relishes the absence of competition.

And for the record, Robl says he was the first to bring sight fishing to Long Island, early in the '90s.

"Every guide will tell you he was the first guy to fly fishing out here," says Ken Rafferty, who left the construction business a few years ago to guide.

Whoever was first, Dixon is generally acknowledged to be the dean of the guides. With two employees, three boats, and a deal with 15 other guides who give him a cut of the charters he books for them, he clearly has the biggest business.

But there is one man to whom even Dixon pays homage. If Dixon is dean, Harvey Bennett is shaman. A 13th generation descendant of early settlers, Bennett, 50, has Gardiners Bay in his genes. And even in a field where everyone has a disparaging remark about the competition, they praise Bennett. Then, business being business, they throw a mild zinger.

"I've been going to Harvey's shop since I was 6 years old," says Blinken, referring to the tackle shop Bennett runs not far from his home in Amagansett. "He's a character." (Read: He's not a cutting edge guide like me.)

"Harvey had the first flats skiff out here," says Dixon. He pauses. "But he never really had the clientele... He sold the boat." Bennett has just bought another flats boat, which he's outfitting for the fall.

"He's the pioneer," says White. "Paul Dixon, on the other hand, has done a lot, too..." To White, the men are Gehrig and Ruth, Frazier and Ali, and he incorporates what he has learned from working with each.

On a crisp day that's cooler than summer and warmer than fall, Bennett is at the helm just off the beach at Napeague. He's talking about his great-grandfather, Jonathan Bennett, a Sag Harbor whaler, and his father, a fisherman-farmer.

"Cast over there," Bennett says in the middle of his story, pointing off the port bow to a spot that looks like any other bit of water. WHAM! a bass smacks the lure, but the angler isn't up to the task of setting the hook. "All I can do is tell you where to cast," says Bennett.

And he can tell you a thing or two about the land and the sea and the people-his people, who've been living off it for three centuries. "I can honestly go out there and show people something I have been very much connected to all my life," says Bennett. "Maybe that's where I get some of my arrogance from."

As a kid in the 1950s and '60s, Bennett poked around the bays in whatever dinghies he and his friends could get their hands on. He started guiding hunting parties on Gardiners Island when he was in his 20s. And though sport and commercial fishermen are historical enemies, he's worked both sides of the divide and still talks to the commercial guys, which may give him an edge when it comes to finding fish. "They're my sources," he says.

Guiding is a mix of mysticism and man hours, intuition and information, and knowing the water is a key to the magic. Blinken and White say they go out whether they have a charter or not, just to keep up with the movement of the fish. Even when Dixon is concentrating on today, he's thinking about tomorrow, making note of schools of baitfish that are likely to attract predators.

Electronic fish finders are useless on the flats. When asked about such gadgets, one guide who works for Dixon just points to the eyes. Hidden behind polarized glasses to cut through the glare, they are the flats fisherman's best weapon.

Bennett has an agenda beyond seeing fish, however. He doesn't want to lose sight of history. "The stories I hear told that I know aren't true," he says, shaking his head in disgust. "I get customers coming in the store, saying they're fishing in Blinkens Cove or Dixons Point." Bennett said he and some old timers hope to create a map with the historical names of local places. And he's passing his knowledge on directly.

"I want to give Merritt some of what I have," he says, explaining that he's taken White under his wing. "He understands this place." Bennett had no idea that he shares a common heritage with his protege: White's great-great-grandfather was a whaling captain out of Sag Harbor.

Among the new generation of guides, one stands out in particular. She's taller than many of her competitors, she's younger, and she has a toe ring. But in a sport that is in every way stereotypically male, from the thrill of the hunt to the obsession with expensive equipment, what most distinguishes Amanda Switzer, 30, is that she's not a man.

"In all of fly fishing, there may be five to 10 female guides," says Dixon, bragging about his employee while she casts off the bow. "She's the first girl guide on Long Island, definitely... You don't meet too many girls that are really into it."

Girl?

"I'd much rather be called a girl," says Switzer, who lives in East Hampton. "You'll call me that when I'm 70, right Paul?" Whatever you call her, she may turn out to be a pioneer. The traditional role of a woman on a flats fishing boat has been that of girlfriend or wife, who watches while the men (boys?) fish.

"Some women feel a little threatened," says Switzer. "Especially when a husband or loved one is teaching them. I know, 'cause I went through that." Switzer has found that women are more receptive to her, however, and she has brought them into the sport. What about the macho Wall Street types that make up a large part of To the Point's clientele? How do they react when Switzer tries to tell them how to fish?

"Honestly, people give me such respect," she said, adding that she has had only one gender-related issue. "If they have to go to the bathroom, they say don't turn around. God forbid I have to go to the bathroom. I just hold it in."

Switzer, a Floral Park native who first started going to the East End to visit a relative, has loved fishing for about as long as she can remember. She caught her first striped bass at age 10, and remembers taking her allowance to Bennett's shop.

"I was like an addict going to a dealer," she says, laughing. "'Harvey, this is all I've got, what can you give me?' He gave me good deals." She wasn't truly hooked, however, until she caught a tarpon in Belize on a fly rod. "That was it."

All of the guides are passionate. And they have to be-they're not doing it to get rich. While $400 a day sounds expensive, "It's a lot cheaper than owning a boat," as Rafferty points out. In addition to the capital costs of equipment, guides are eating the higher cost of fuel. Bad weather means no trip, and no payment. Blinken says a solo guide can make as much as $50,000 to $60,000 a year; more for those who have employees or book other guides. But some competitors roll their eyes at those figures.

Bennett is worried that the family tradition may fade away. He has no children, and his brother's son isn't planning a life on the water.

"He's a modern-day kid," Bennett says. "He wants to be an executive."

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