There's a particular kind of longing that builds in you after a week of fishing somewhere foreign, no matter how good that fishing was. You start missing the water you know like the back of your hand — the rocks that hold fish, the tide you can read without thinking, the light on a Cape Cod afternoon. So when I landed back on the Cape after a week of Icelandic cold, there was really only one thing on my mind: I needed to get in the ocean!
Not fish. Swim. That was the plan. Wednesday was a warm, overcast summer afternoon — the kind that felt downright tropical after a week of Icelandic wind — and all I wanted was to feel the ocean on my skin without waders between us. The rod came along almost as an afterthought, tossed in the truck out of habit more than intention.
Finding the Rock
I found a rock I liked, one that sits at a sweet spot on the rising tide, put on my Korkers for grip, and climbed up to get a bird’s-eye view of the water below. The bottom here runs dark — thick weed, dark stone, the kind of structure that makes a bass nearly disappear until it decides otherwise.
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Middle of the afternoon, middle of summer — not exactly prime time for striped bass, and I knew it. But the sky had other plans. Overcast, misty, a little wind pushing across the surface, and terns working something offshore. Enough to make me second-guess my own skepticism.
Two Fish, One Rock
I hadn't been up on that rock long, fan-casting into the gray, when I caught sight of a bass cruising below me. I made a cast past him and watched him turn and chase my lure down like a largemouth bass bolting out from underneath a lily pad.
One more cast, same spot, and he inhaled it right on the surface. Thirty inches of dark, healthy striper, fighting hard on my light 7'6" rod and VR50 — an absolute blast compared to the 9'6" surfcasting rods I usually swing.
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