Great Point lighthouse is a popular tourist attraction on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts.

Running out of the inlet, he said, “I feel good about where I am, Dad. I feel good about what I’m about to do.” We were headed towards Cape Lookout and I knew he was talking about fishing and I know he was talking about things other than fishing, and he worked the boat through the rough water where the outgoing tide was piling up in tall rollers and calm water lay ahead.

That albacore season with Jack, everything seemed to be on hold, and teetering, and it was a long Indian summer of warm days and he was out of school during the pandemic, starting his senior college year with online classes, and finally had time for something he’d never had time for before: Getting serious about saltwater fish on the fly.

For three years he’d guided for trout in Montana during the summers, rolling back east barely in time for the first day of classes. But that summer was different, in every imaginable sense, for everyone and certainly for a rising college senior. And one of the silver linings was this: He’d spent the summer on our boat, and on his friends’ boats, chasing Spanish mackerel and bluefish and redfish, live-baiting for kings, practice-casting on the beach, and tying flies.

We’d been hard after the false albacore for two weeks, with intermittent success. During our best chance we’d each landed a fish from a popcorn-blitzing school and he was fighting his second, and in a moment of selfish disregard I cast from the console and sent a lead-wrapped size 2 heavy-gauge hook through one side of his ear cartilage and out the other. I cut the line and he landed his fish with the heavy fly flapping against his ear lobe, and then we motored away from the other anglers so I could work the fly out as he fought nausea and fainting. I was a little on edge, waiting for him to blow up—I would have, and who wouldn’t?—but he was perfectly calm. “This is fishing, Dad,” he said. “This stuff happens. Give me a minute, okay? Let me catch my breath and see if I can stand up and we’ll get back after them.”

Then, clearing the inlet, we raced towards the Hook, set on beating the other boats to the fish, the rising sun a golden scimitar on the horizon. It was three days before Halloween and he was unshaven and grizzled, with Chaco tan lines striping the tops of his feet. He even smelled like an angler, shorts and shirt slimed with fish scales and blood and sweat, and why wear a clean set when more of the same is coming?

I’m a brooder with a slight tendency to pout when I don’t like the way the stars line up, and I’d found more reasons than I should to lament certain moments of the last few months. Jack’s last year in college. His last autumn close to home. Most likely our last chance at false albacore in what could be a longer stretch than I wanted to contemplate. I’d started to count the grains of sand slipping through the glass, and hoard each one as if it was the best there would ever be. It was an unhealthy approach, for both my head and my marriage, but running out of the inlet with Jack I suddenly realized just how different my headspace was than my son’s.

In the inlet, I sensed constriction and constraint and the turbulent waters of the far-off shoals. But for Jack, the future was as boundless as the great curve of blue that heralded the ocean ahead, as full of possibility as every new day on the water.

And just then I remembered a moment from the day before. I’d arrived in the late afternoon, and Jack had the fire crackling in the fire pit, and an extra Manhattan waiting on the picnic table beside the fly rods, and he grinned as I walked through the gate. He handed me the drink as I sat by the fire and his girlfriend smiled. “You know Jack,” she said. “He wanted everything perfect for you.” It was one of those times that under different circumstances might not have snagged in my heart. Just a chummy gesture among pals. Instead, it will go down as one of my most favorite fishing memories, although there was no fishing in it, no zinging lines or thighs pressed against the gunwale, only my son who’d gone to the trouble of carefully placing each element of that backyard tableau together to let me know: So glad you’re here, Dad. So glad we can fish together.

With the inlet behind and the smoky scrim of Cape Lookout seven miles distant, Jack bore down on the throttle, oblivious to my agitated state of mind. And that’s when I realized that I needed to recalibrate my own perspectives on the days and years ahead. Open water lay before us both. We each were on a course towards horizons unseen. I’ve chased the new and the unknown all my life, and all my life those pursuits have been a source of vigor and elation. That could only change if I let it.

The bow settled and I felt the bezel turning on my own inner compass. Running towards the cape, I scanned the water for diving birds and breaking schools. We had a full day of fishing ahead, my son and I, and neither of us would rather be anywhere else in the world. Whatever grain of sand was to follow was less consequential than the moment at hand.

…In our last issue of 2021, you’ll find themes consistent with this message of looking optimistically toward the future while respectfully recognizing the past. We welcome the venerable writer T. Edward Nickens as a new contributor. His thoughtful piece in The Undertow explores his own epiphany about hopeful perspectives on unknown horizons. Meanwhile, we also look back with respect on those who’ve preceded us; James Spica guides us, fly rod in hand, along the literary footsteps of popular New England writers, and we pay homage to SoCal fly fishing pioneer Sam Nix. Chico Fernandez provides a treatise on fly casting, Carlos Cortez schools us on not being mind-tricked by permit, and Michael Smith, another new contributor, reminds us to make time to fish.

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More about Saltwater fly fishing in Cape Cod…

George V. Roberts – Plymouth, Massachusetts

September – George V. Roberts Jr

Mark White – Atlantic Striped Bass – A Species in Peril

Atlantic Striped Bass: Pisces in Peril | Mark White

The post That Albacore Season – T. Edward Nickens first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post That Albacore Season – T. Edward Nickens appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The Scene

The greatest migrations on Earth do not occur on African savannas, Old World steppes, or North American flyways, but along the neck of the eastern funnel where Long Island juts into the North Atlantic. Here tide and wind clash over inshore and offshore bars, and sea creatures—most unseen save by anglers—stage, feed, and stream south and north.

In autumn, gannets fold their wings and pierce the waves as if shot by medieval archers. Peregrine falcons trade between south-side cliffs and north-side beaches. Ospreys and eagles hover and dive. Sea ducks swirl around the horizon like coal smoke.

Whales, dolphins, and seals graze on mile-long shoals of menhaden. Sea turtles—leatherbacks, loggerheads, and Kemp’s ridleys—cleave quieter water. Mola mola flop and wag.

Farther out, sharks, tunas, mahi, marlins, longfin albacore, king mackerel, and wahoo crash through schools of halfbeaks and frigate mackerel.

Starting in Indian summer, my friends and I are on hand to watch and participate. Bobbing in little boats, we jockey around rust-colored clouds of bay anchovies harried from above by screaming gulls and terns, harried from below by ravenous predator fish that send the inch-long bait spraying into the air like welding sparks.

The striped bass move slower and are packed tighter than the bluefish or false albacore. These “bass boils” can cover acres. They sound like washing machines, and they happen nowhere else.

My boat, a 21-foot green Contender, is named Assignment, so when my creditors and editors demand to speak to me, my wife can tell them, “He’s on Assignment.”

There’s only one occupation at which you can make less money than as a freelance nature writer, and that’s as a light-tackle fishing guide. It’s a calling I aspire to. The guiding I do now isn’t real. It’s philanthropy—pro-bono service for friends staffing and funding the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Trout Unlimited, and American Rivers.

The Fish

These days, virtually all the topwater bass are shorts, so I target only false albacore (aka albies), especially the big, raging pods. All that competition increases hookup chances exponentially.

Albies are mini tunas. They attain immense speeds via hard, sickle tails equipped with horizontal stabilizers, fins that fold into grooves and a ramjet-like oxygenating system whereby water is pushed, rather than pumped, through massive, blood-rich gills. The average 7-pounder will rip off 30 yards of backing before you can palm your reel.

Stripers and bluefish roll and splash. Albies erupt, flashing silver flanks. When they get excited they light up like billfish. Twice this past September I found them 100 feet off the Montauk Light, crisscrossing wildly around and under the Assignment, backs glowing neon green in the high sun. They were so beautiful I almost forgot to cast.

Fortunately, albies are the worst-eating fish in the sea. A commercial market does exist, however — in New York City’s Chinatown, where they’re sold as green bonito (among the best-eating fish in the sea). My friend Captain David Blinken, one of Long Island’s most popular and experienced light-tackle guides (northflats.com), was recently ejected from a Chinatown fish market for telling the owner a fact he didn’t want to know: that albies aren’t bonitos.

I can’t think that anyone eats albies. Forty years ago I broiled one, and it literally stank me out of the kitchen. My theory is this: Chinatown residents buy an albie because it’s beautiful. They take one bite, trash it, and never buy another. It’s just that there are so many Chinatown residents they maintain the market.

The threat to albies isn’t human consumption but a possible reduction fishery, perhaps for animal feed and similar to that which depleted menhaden. The false albacore’s tight schooling behavior and predictable migration routes make it vulnerable to industrial-scale purse-seining. Yet the National Marine Fisheries Service declines to regulate the species because it’s abundant. Such is the traditional mindset of fish managers: Don’t manage a stock until it’s depleted. And then manage it not for abundance but maximum sustainable yield: i.e., dead-on-the-dock poundage.

We don’t like to think of albies as baitfish, but that’s what they are. Blinken offers this: “False Albacore need to be protected now; we can’t afford to wait until it’s too late. They sustain marine ecosystems. Larger predators can’t make it just on forage like sand eels, anchovies, herring, and spearing. They need more protein. And albies give us guides a shot at diversity. Since the demise of the striped bass fishery we rely on them.”

From what I saw at Montauk in the fall of 2019, I wouldn’t say a striper demise has happened, but it sure seems to be on the way. It was nice to once again encounter massive bass boils extending from Shagwong Reef around the point and several miles along the south side. But not one bass I saw caught was over the 28-inch limit. Most get picked off as soon as they hit 28.

In 1984, after the states ran stripers into commercial extinction, Congress passed the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act, a law requiring a moratorium on striper fishing in any East Coast state that refused to comply with a management plan hatched by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC).

Recreational anglers, then and now responsible for the vast majority of striped bass mortality, were limited to one fish daily at 36 inches. Stripers surged back.

But rather than managing for abundance, the ASMFC responded by expanding the recreational limit to two fish at 28 inches. The stock steadily dwindled, and it kept dwindling even after the ASMFC cut the limit to one fish at 28 inches. Finally, the ASMFC admitted what anglers knew: that stripers are “overfished.”

On October 30, 2019, the ASMFC had a chance to reverse the decline. Instead, it imposed a one-fish recreational slot limit for the ocean of between 28 and 34 inches.

“That decision dooms the 2015 and 2016 year classes,” remarks Blinken. “Why can’t we remember past lessons? Stripers are such special fish. You can find them in the rips or on the flats, 20 miles offshore or 20 miles up rivers. They fuel whole economies, providing income for hotels, restaurants, marinas and tackle shops. Now there are gillnetters all along the south side of Long Island. They’re blocking striper migration, creating boating hazards, killing turtles, birds, and marine mammals. And the six-pack guys [running large charters for recreational trollers] kill even more big breeders than the gillnetters. To destroy this resource to make a few people happy is so wrong.” 

The Fishing

Albies can be as picky as brown trout, especially in fading light. When they get lockjaw, try a white Gartside Gurgler with lots of flash in the tail or a Crease Fly.

Blinken’s standby fly (which he originally invented for bonito) is the Jellyfish.  “When I first started fishing albies I used only epoxy flies,” he says. “They’d bang off the hull or engine and shatter. So I started experimenting with a fly that was durable and could imitate lots of bait–squid, spearing, peanut bunker, anchovies. I’ve always tied my flies with feathers splayed. When I started doing Hi Ties I didn’t get enough movement, so I took some slender feathers and tied them into the back tarpon-style. Then I tied in uniform collars of synthetic material. When the fly sat it the water with the tendrils hanging down it looked like a jellyfish.”

Another popular Montauk fly is the Albie Whore, invented by our friend and Blinken’s regular client, Richard Reagan. It’s a bit like a Deceiver but tied with tail feathers splayed and side feathers anchored with hot glue. Google “Albie Whore” and you’ll get dozens of videos of guys tying it. Everyone save Reagan is tying it wrong (flylifemagazine.com/at-the-vise-albie-whore).

For albies, Blinken and I use only 10-weight fly rods. In deeper water, where most albies feed, a 10-weight has lifting power that 8-weights and 9-weights lack. “You want to beat that fish as quickly as possible so lactic acid doesn’t build up,” Blinken says. “Of course you can land an albie with an 8-weight, but you might kill it.”

Use an Albright knot to join leader to fly line. If a fly line comes with a loop, an Albright is all the easier to tie. A loop-to-loop connection creates a hinge effect that impedes your leader from turning over.

The angling mistake I see most is “trout striking”—i.e., lifting the fly rod instead of strip striking. Trout strikes guarantee missing at least half of your fish.

The next most common mistake I see is making too many false casts. For albies, Blinken and I use floating lines. They allow us to water haul and, with a single back cast, deliver the fly. “Albie fishing is very aggressive, very fast-paced,” says Blinken. “When the pod moves 20 feet to your left or right, you need to pick up and present it again quickly. If you’re using an intermediate or sinking line, you’re not going to get to those fish.”

When you’re throwing into big bait balls, matching the hatch is bad strategy. Why should a fish eat your fly when there are several hundred thousand baitfish that look just like it? Usually your flies should be two or three times bigger than the bait.

Guides make mistakes, too. Churlishness and too much advice are major turnoffs. And this from Blinken: “I think the biggest mistake a guide can make is having his client show up when it’s unfishable. We all want to make money, but if it’s blowing 25, you don’t tell your client to show up anyway, especially if it takes him four hours to get there. And guides need to be flexible. I keep my skiff available all fall, so if Montauk’s too rough, I can fish west.”

Once, when I was in Blinken’s boat, we watched a guide chase stripers in past the wave break. It’s a dangerous practice, but sometimes they can’t resist. “He’s gonna turtle,” yelled Blinken. When he did, we went in stern-first and fished out the client who had lost his rod, fly box, and car keys. Someone else fished out the guide, who didn’t get a tip that day. The boat rolled around under the cliffs all fall.

Best Conversation on the Water

I trailer the Assignment to Niantic, Connecticut, and cross to Long Island. After I tie up to the dock, I don’t like to hold up the scup guys. Scup are as prolific as they are delicious. The fishery has a huge African American following.

One early morning, after I’d parked my truck, I ran back to the ramp because nine scup anglers were preparing to launch a boat scarcely bigger than mine. They were headed a mile offshore, each with an excellent chance of filling his 30-fish limit.

One gentleman declared: “Take your time. You ain’t a young man no more.” Then he pointed to my one-piece Loomis rods and inquired what I was planning to do with the “long fish poles.” I explained that I was headed to Montauk to chase false albacore. Slapping his forehead, he intoned, “Twenty-five miles for fish you can’t eat?”  (…continued)

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The post Ted Williams Is On Assignment at the Eastern Funnel first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Ted Williams Is On Assignment at the Eastern Funnel appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

by Tom King
Originally published in the January/February 2019 issue of Tail Fly Fishing Magazine

On Saturday, September 15th, 2018, Arthur Medici, a 26-year-old engineering student living in Revere, Massachusetts, was boogie-boarding off Cape Cod’s Newcomb Hollow beach in Wellfleet when he was fatally attacked by a great white shark.

Shark fatalities are statistically rare. According to the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History, in 2017 there were 88 cases of unprovoked shark attacks on humans worldwide (slightly higher than the five-year average of 83 annual incidents). Of those 88 attacks, there were five fatalities.

Before Arthur Medici, the last shark fatality in Massachusetts had occurred on July 25th, 1936, off Mattapoisett, near New Bedford, when Joseph Troy Jr., 16, from Dorchester, was attacked while swimming. After an investigation by Dr. Hugh M. Smith, former director of the US Bureau of Fisheries, Troy’s death was attributed to a “man-eater” (what is now called a great white shark).

Although fatalities are rare, shark attacks in Massachusetts have been on the rise in recent years. On July 30th, 2012, a white shark bit the feet and leg of a body-surfer at Ballston Beach, Truro, on Cape Cod’s eastern side. He recovered.

In 2014, two female kayakers were observing seals off Plymouth when a white shark attacked. Their kayaks were very close together. The shark came up from beneath and knocked both women overboard. A state shark biologist who investigated the incident told me that the bite marks on one of the kayaks indicated it was a predatory bite—as opposed to an investigatory bite—as the teeth had penetrated deeply into the cockpit of the well-made kayak. The woman in the struck kayak, he said, was very lucky to have escaped unscathed.

There have been several other attacks since.

Let’s take a look at the background information on why shark attacks are increasing in Massachusetts.

Worldwide, a few of the larger shark species have fatally attacked humans. One of the leaders in fatal attacks is the great white, whose scientific name is  Carcharodon carcharias. For centuries, the great white was commonly known as the “man-eater.” After World War Two, it came to be referred to as the white shark, the great white shark, the white pointer, white death, and other similar common names. Yet very little was known about the elusive creature. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that filmmaker Peter Gimbel captured the first underwater footage of the great white—and that required four months and 12,000 miles of travel. Gimbel’s 1971 documentary,  Blue Water, White Death, was doubtless a source of research for author Peter Benchley. Benchley’s 1974 bestseller,  Jaws, along with Steven Speilberg’s 1975 blockbuster film adaptation, made the great white shark a household name and caused many people to be afraid to go into the water.

Fully grown, great whites are 16 to 20 feet long and weigh 2,500 to 5,500 pounds. They have large triangular serrated teeth that are well-adapted to ripping meat off seals and whale carcasses, which are the preferred meals of the larger whites. Several years ago a dead whale off Provincetown, in Massachusetts Bay, had six different great whites come up from the depths to feast on its carcass. More recently, on October 14th, 2018, a boat owned by Hyannis Whale Watcher Cruises was on a tour with about 160 passengers when it spotted a dead finback whale with two great whites attached to it. One of the sharks was 18 feet long.

This shark species can function in water temperatures from 43 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. That is one of the widest temperature ranges for any shark, and is the reason an occasional great white is spotted in New England in midwinter.

Enacted in 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act has resulted in a population explosion of grey seals in Massachusetts, especially along Cape Cod’s remote eastern beaches. Seal surveys are difficult to conduct because they can’t be done in a day and also because seals move around unpredictably. However, drone surveys estimate there are now 50,000 to 70,000 seals in Massachusetts waters. This massive increase in seals is a big attraction for their predator, the great white shark, which itself received federal protection in 1997. The combination of protecting both the seals and their predators is a good example of “Today’s solution is tomorrow’s problem.”  It’s especially a problem for those who presently frolic in Massachusetts waters, as humans are about the same size as seals.

A decade ago there were early signs of a potential problem developing. On Labor Day weekend in 2008, tuna spotter pilot Wayne Davis observed a rarely seen great white off Chatham, and he took definitive photos. On September 2nd, 2009, pilot George Breen spotted two large sharks off Chatham. The sharks were identified later that day as great whites by Dr. Greg Skomal, senior biologist at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF). Three days later, Skomal, along with DMF shark researcher John Chisholm and commercial tuna fishermen Captain Billy Chaprales and his son, Nick, were able able to place satellite pop-up tags into two great whites off Chatham, close to shore. At this writing, Dr. Skomal and his colleagues have tagged 146 great whites for the purpose of research.

Great White chasing down a wounded seal in Cape Cod

Several types of devices have been used to tag great whites. Some of the tags send information via satellite, while others transmit acoustic signals that are collected by hydrophones (underwater microphones). As the the great white population off Massachusetts has increased over the years, the taggers have become more skilled at placing tags. However, because of a lack of tagging funds—each tag costs thousands of dollars—coupled with the increase in sharks as well as the relatively small tagging area, there are many untagged great whites out there. For example, if spotter pilot Wayne Davis were to see 10 untagged whites in a day, yet only three tags were available on the tagging boat, then seven sharks would go untagged. Many of the untagged sharks are filmed with a GoPro camera from the tagging boat and are then cataloged. They are identified by their physical characteristics.

The tagging and filming takes place in a relatively small area, limited by the range of the tagging boat. The tagging boat is located at Chatham, on easterly Cape Cod, so it can’t go to every shark sighting in the state. Tagging takes place along the oceanside beaches of Chatham, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, and Truro. Some of the sharks are trailed for miles in the shallower sandy-bottom areas and tagged in 4 to 6 feet of water close to shore—often right in front of clueless beachgoers. (The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, a private non-profit enterprise, has been an enormous help, monetarily and physically, in assisting the state tagging program.)

The Cape Cod tagging area is not so much an area where the white sharks regularly linger, but rather is an area where the nomadic whites visit to participate in the seal buffet present there. An adult great white probably has to eat about three seals a month when available. Most of these whites eventually will travel along the coast after feeding and could return for a meal—or find one elsewhere.

On Cape Cod, people both ashore and in boats have videoed attacks on seals by great whites. These incidents have increased yearly. YouTube now hosts a number of videos of smaller great whites in the 8- to 10-foot range snatching striped bass and bluefish from anglers’ lines. Shark warning signs are posted at a number of Cape Cod beaches to alert people to the danger of a possible interspecies mishap.

Right now the situation between the seals and great whites exists primarily on Cape Cod’s easterly beaches, but a number of sightings and incidents (such as with the female kayakers off Plymouth) suggest that it could be spreading. Given enough time, the situation may exist along the entire New England coast.

When great whites enter Massachusetts Bay, they are harder to spot. The water is deeper and darker than it is on the easterly side of Cape Cod, where it is easier to see them from the spotter plane. White sharks cruising on the surface in Massachusetts Bay have resulted in beach closings as far north as Plymouth.

Marshfield Harbormaster Mike DiMeo places five hydrophones along the beaches close to shore, from Scituate to Plymouth. When an acoustic-tagged shark gets within a few hundred yards of a submerged hydrophone, the signal it transmits identifies the shark and the time it was there. The great white pings DiMeo has recorded have increased yearly. Untagged sharks are not detected, so there are likely more great whites in this area than what the hydrophones indicate. The hydrophones have to be retrieved and checked to acquire the data. A month or more could elapse between checks. This is good for shark research but is not useful information for beachgoers. DiMeo told me he plans to keep pushing for real-time hydrophones. “I feel this is the new norm and society wants real-time information.”

On August 3rd, 2017, a paddle-boarder was attacked in 3 feet of water by a great white on an East Cape beach; his board was damaged from the bite. In another August 2017 incident, a great white attacked a seal amid bathers very close to shore, sending everyone swimming and running to get out of the water.

On August 15th, 2018, a 61-year-old man was standing in shallow water off Truro, about 30 yards from shore, near at least 10 seals, when he was bitten on the leg and torso by a great white. He was med-flighted to Tufts Medical Center in Boston, where he underwent a prolonged recovery.

After that close call, many people started to sense it was only a matter of time until a fatality happened. They didn’t have to wait long. One month later Arthur Medici was attacked. The shark severed Medici’s femoral artery, and he died on the way to the hospital.

Although fatal shark attacks are statistically rare, if the current trend of seals, white sharks, and people in the water in Massachusetts continues, we won’t have to wait 82 years for another fatality.

Bio: Captain Tom King has been a longtime angler in the Massachusetts area, purchasing his first boat in 1949. Tom has been a fly fishing guide in Boston Harbor for striped bass, and he has also guided offshore for sharks. For a number of years Tom wrote a column for  On the Water. He has given many public presentations on New England’s shark species.

Further Reading and Viewing

Peter Gimbel’s 1971 documentary, Blue Water, White Death, is widely considered the best shark movie ever made. You can purchase it as a DVD on Amazon or buy or rent it through iTunes.

One of the crew members on Gimbel’s expedition was the late National Book Award-winning nature writer Peter Matthiessen, who was hired as the voyage historian. Matthiessen’s account of the voyage, Blue Meridian:  The Search for the Great White Shark, is available through Amazon.

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The post Cape Cod’s first fatal shark attack in 82 years first appeared on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.

The post Cape Cod’s first fatal shark attack in 82 years appeared first on Tail Fly Fishing Magazine.