A Late Comeback For East End Stripers

By Peter Kaminsky
The New York Times
Sport's Desk
November 4, 2001, Sunday

It was the best of years and, for obvious reasons, the worst of years. I am talking not just about world events, but about our local champions in pinstripes -- the striped bass.

The season had started well in the spring when Brendan McCarthy, full-time bartender and most-of-the-time flyrod guide, brought me to the flats of Jamaica Bay and there, on a chilly but bright April morning, I tossed a cast at a 38-inch striper feeding in the pilings south of the Marine Parkway Bridge. To our three-way surprise (mine, Brendan's and the fish's), I was soon in combat with a beautiful striped bass.

Then in June, there were crummy days when the bass should have been on the flats of Gardiner's Bay and one glorious day with Paul Dixon and Amanda Switzer when a 60-foot cast in shallow water produced a 20-pound striper in skinny water, a fish and an experience I had loved from afar for at least as long as Dante pined for Beatrice.

Next came late-summer doldrums followed by the false albacore. As they always do, they showed up at Montauk. They follow the rain bait that congregate by the billions at the point, pausing on their yearly migration. This event and the fact that Montauk Point represents the mouth of a funnel between the mainland and the Gulf Stream that widens north to include the waters from the Grand Banks to the coast accounts for, in my opinion, the biggest migration of wildlife on our planet.

For the flyfisherman and flyfisherwoman, this river of life is of interest when it brings the great herds of striped bass close to shore, a raging black hole of frenzied bass crashing the blood red pods of rain bait.

This year, it was a different story. On Sept. 9, Amanda, my longtime fishing buddy, Josh Feigenbaum and I rounded the point chasing albies, looking for bass. As we came upon the south side, there were no anglers. ''Strange,'' I thought. There, on the beach at Turtle Cove, where one year ago the bass beat the water to a froth, three women in long black chadors, their faces covered by veils, walked the shore, their robes blowing in the wind. In the background, the lighthouse stood against the sky like a minaret. A scene from a Bergman movie? A Middle Eastern production of ''Macbeth''?

Of course they were just three women out for a walk on the beach, but two days later, Sept. 11, it felt more like an omen. All through that week, clear blue skies and south winds gathered the bass, but as the torrent of life prepared to move toward the city and down the coast, I am certain the cloud of death from New York rode the west winds to the point. A week later, a vicious nor'easter -- the worst in 30 years -- scoured the beaches, heaved the sandbars far offshore and sent the bass God knows where.

But life must go on, and it must keep moving no matter what madness humans unleash. The bait stayed and where the bait stays, Dixon reminded me, the fish will always come. Finally, on Oct. 22, we fought our way through heavy seas to Caswells Point a mile west of Montauk. It is the fishiest place I know. Paul, the helicopter entrepreneur Dennis Kluesener and I saw what we were looking for -- huge blitzes, miles of them: funny blitzes, though, bass albies and blues all mixed. Bouncing, as if on a trampoline, we moved into the schools. Paul looked for the square tails of stripers. They are always massed in a tight, cacophonous bunch. We cast into them and hooked fish after fish.

That's the way it's supposed to be, but the entropy of September somehow had seeped east to Montauk, and it wasn't until this day that the natural order reasserted itself. I felt that maybe this year the run, after pausing like the rest of us to catch our sanity, was back on track.

Last Sunday night, Brendan, he of last April's blessed fish tidings, called to report that the migration had finally made its way to New York City. Big bass off Breezy Point. I picked up a roast chicken at the deli on Verandah Place, and we drove out to Dead Horse Bay, hopped into Brendan's skiff and made for the point. In the spring our heading would have been for the Twin Towers. Now that same course pointed to a hole on the horizon that gaped like a hockey player's grimace. We moved into the heaving rip. The good news is, the blitzes were there. Pure bass. The bad news is, whenever we motored up on them, they went down. Brendan gave in and picked up a spinning rod and fished deep. Soon he was into a 30-inch striper.

We moved inshore to escape the wind. Brendan mounted the poling platform and because the wind was fair and the water clear I sent a hopeful cast to a moving shadow. A huge bass followed. I stripped and paused. He rushed my fly. I moved and then he saw the boat and made for deep water.

There is life in these waters yet, I thought, more life than you can number. These fish will move past the harbor, millions of them will turn right and move past the place where the morning shadows of the Twin Towers played on the waters. Pinstripe champions, New Yorkers. Eventually, even after a sad season, they will always come back.

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