Glory Days at Block Island

I set foot on Block Island for the first time in the late fall of 1983, searching for the schools of giant striped bass I had been catching from the surf on Cape Cod back in 1981. At that time, no one had realized that the historic striped bass blitzes of Pochet Hole and Monomoy Island, and the beaching of a 73-pound striped bass in November, would mark the closing of the greatest era of striped bass surf fishing on Cape Cod.

I was on Cape Cod for that final great year. In 1981, I was 23 years old and living on Long Island. I was between jobs and had no family responsibilities; I had all the time in the world to fish. My fishing partner and I made the decision to leave for Cape Cod in early September of that year, and we left Long Island with no return date in mind. Once we arrived, we immediately knew something very special was happening – a tremendous number of large fish were being taken. We had arrived right in the middle of the legendary ‘81 surf run of striped bass on Nauset Beach.

That year, my fishing partner and lifelong best friend, Marty, and I had many great nights on Nauset. All the fish we caught were taken on live eels, and the fishing was spectacular at spots like Pochet Hole, Long Bar and Old Chatham Inlet. I remember making the long, 12-mile ride over the sand to Old Chatham Inlet night after night with Marty, and we would spend the entire ride strategizing for the night ahead. I miss that ride so much! If I close my eyes, I’m transported back to a brisk early-autumn morning at the Chatham co-op fish market, where all the surf fishermen came to sell their fish and talk about the previous night. I remember seeing legendary local Cape Cod fishermen with their pickup trucks filled to the brim with huge striped bass. What a sight!

The spectacular fishing on Cape Cod, combined with the unique beauty and changing character of Nauset and the back beach, turned me into a lifelong surf-fishing fanatic. But as 1982 came
and went, the fishing was nothing like the year before. The October blitzes never materialized on Nauset Beach, leaving me a Cape Cod surf-fishing refugee. I had lost my favorite spot, and I had nowhere to go. What would be the next Cape Cod?

While surf-fishing back in our home waters of Montauk Point on Long Island, my crew members and I would often wonder about a little island visible in the distance. We knew it was Block Island, but that was about all we knew. Little information was shared about the fishing on Block Island, and there seemed to be a veil of secrecy surrounding its shores. That was enough to catch our attention, so we decided to pack up and take a trip to fish the island. We made reservations for the ferry from Rhode Island, and we booked rooms at the New Shoreham House.

The Great Kingdom of Striped Bass

When we arrived, it didn’t take us long to realize that the days of easy fishing on the Cape Cod sand were over – Block Island had cliffs and rocks everywhere. Not many people lived on the island, and even though the calendar said it was November of 1983, we felt like we had stepped back in time to the 1950’s. Block Island life seemed simple and pure, and I remember seeing the old-style Land Rover trucks driving around the island. The waterfront home building boom had not yet begun, so we had no access restrictions at all. We explored the entire island, and the more we explored, the more impressed we were by it. Every fishing spot looked better than the last. There were deep bowls and long, rocky points, all of which had sea birds sitting in the water. What stood
out the most, however, was the smell of bait in the air. We could see large sand eels trapped in rock pools behind the dropping tide, and we noticed old rusted pipes coming out from some of
the rock boulders in the water. Later, we learned that the pipes were the remnants of the bass-fishing stands of the late 1800’s. My imagination went wild with thoughts of the years gone by: Maybe this was the same Block Island bass stand where Francis W. Miner caught his undocumented 86-pound striped bass in 1887!

When we started to fish the island, we realized that we had stumbled onto another special bass-fishing phenomenon. A handful of local Block Island guys were fishing a strange lure that looked like a pencil. It was called a needlefish. These local fishermen were catching more giant striped bass than we had ever dreamed of; some of them had landed multiple 60-pounders. The locals never said a word to any fishing report or newspaper. Until we came along, they had the fishing to themselves. Needlefish in 1983 were like rare diamonds; there were very few around and each one was invaluable.

Needlefish in 1983 were waiting for a birthplace, and they found it on the rocky shores of Block Island. My crew of fishermen had only eight needlefish among us, the classic-style Boone
Needlefish constructed with screw eyes. Most of the guys fishing Block Island only owned one needlefish – the one tied on the end of their line.

We joined the Block Island locals in a blitz of stripers at Southwest Point at noon one day, and all the fish were giants. Every one was over 30 pounds, and most of them were in the 40’s. Those striped bass tore the screw eyes right out of our needlefish – if they didn’t straighten or crush the hooks first. We knew these fish had to be from the same super school we had fished at Nauset in 1981. As the fishing wore on, blitz after blitz, all eight of our needlefish were completely torn apart by the cows.

All the fish wanted were the needlefish, but you couldn’t find a single one on Block Island. One of my friends had an idea: he would find a payphone and call Don Musso, the plug maker on Long
Island, and ask him to ship overnight whatever he had in needlefish lures.

The next day, we waited at the Block Island Post Office like kids on Christmas Eve. Santa Claus eventually came, dressed in a postal uniform and carrying a postal bag loaded with 24 wired-through needlefish. Don Musso came through for us big time, and we went to work on the cows.

The fish were everywhere around the island, and we caught uncountable numbers of mid-30 to high-40-pound stripers. Ballards Beach, Grove Point, Southwest Point, Cat Rock Cove and
Black Rock all gave up fish. A blanket of large sand eels surrounded the island, and the huge school of giant bass stayed right on them. The daytime blitzes at Southwest Point were unbelievable.
Forty-pound stripers were thrashing on top, their whole bodies coming out of the water. I had never seen such enormous bass hitting during the bright sunshine of day, and these fish tore up our new wired-through needlefish and demolished our plugs. We had an empty coffee can on hand to hold all our straightened and crushed hooks, and in between tides, we’d examine all the size 4/0 and 5/0 treble hooks in the coffee can. There was a great fishing story connected to each and every crushed hook.

My crew and I realized something very special was going on here. This was the great striped bass’s kingdom, and Block Island had cast a spell on us.

A Thanksgiving Blitz

Best of all, it was not crowded and all the fishermen on Block Island were gentlemen. In addition to our crew from Long Island were some locals, a few guys from Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and a father-son team. We were fishing in the midst of the true glory years on Block Island, but none of us knew it at the time.

November wore on, and soon Thanksgiving ‘83 was upon us. Everyone was leaving Block Island for the holiday and a storm was advancing up the coast, but the thought of leaving the island
never entered our minds. We knew there was an opportunity upon us that shouldn’t be missed. Our crew had a great Thanksgiving dinner that was over by 3:30 p.m., and then we decided to start
fishing at Southwest Point.

When we got to the spot, the whole rock bar was white water and the bowl looked black, and we had Southwest Point to ourselves. As soon as we started fishing we were into fish. All through the night, from 4 p.m. to 6 a.m., we picked away at the striped bass on Don Musso wooden needlefish. It was a black night, with rain and wind sweeping into the bowl, and it felt awesome. One crew member hooked a monster that he battled for a long while, finally landing it deep in the bowl at Southwest Point. In the morning, this cow dragged the scale down to 59 pounds. Another crew member weighed in a fish of 55 pounds, and we had many fish between 35 and 50 pounds. It was such a special night, with just the four of us at Southwest Point, all alone except for the moby stripers. When morning came, the stripers were hitting needlefish at the end of each cast so fast that we had trouble getting the line onto the manual pick-up. It was an incredible experience.

Return to the Block in ’84

We left Block Island a few days later, and as winter settled in, the Block was all we thought about. We were in total awe of the island. We had stumbled upon some of the greatest striped bass fishing ever, and we had no idea that it was going to get even better. When we returned to Block Island in the late fall of 1984, there were more fishermen around, but it was not crowded like it would be in the years to come. The island waters were loaded with large sand eels and mackerel. I had never have seen so much bait – the harbor water was black with it. I knew we were in the midst of a very special natural event, as the largest migrating schools of giant striped bass and massive schools of large sand eels were colliding in Block Island waters.

When we started to fish in the late fall of 1984, the weather conditions were downright frigid. The puddles on the beach trails were frozen, and we were using thin scuba diving gloves and hoods to fish. This arctic weather made the fishing more challenging, and in the end, more rewarding.

The fish were hitting Don Musso wooden needlefish in fluorescent glow green during the day and black needles on those dark, black nights. That year, we fished in a lot of calm water on the south side of Block Island. We discovered that the fish loved 7-inch Red Fins, Bombers and Hellcats. We acted like mad scientists, loading these lures with different amounts of weight for fishing different spots around the island. In our trucks we kept crates filled with spray paints in different shades of green, blue, yellow and plum. We would paint the plugs right on the beach and then hang them in the truck with the heater on so they could dry. Seven-inch Red Fins were spray-painted fluorescent glow green with chrome sides and loaded to a special weight. We fished them slow, reeling just enough to feel the current.

The bone-jarring hits from 40-pound stripers on these plugs were incredible in the calm water. We caught many 40-pounders, and not one fish weighed less than 30 pounds. We would start fishing at 4:30 in the afternoon and end at 6:00 in the morning. We would move all over the island, feeling completely tuned in to the island’s tides and currents; all we talked about were the island’s tendencies and where the fish would be at what time.

One night, my partner and I walked down the cliffs of Southeast Light to fish Lighthouse Cove, Sand Bank Cove, Southeast Point and Cat Rock Cove on a falling tide. There were one or two giants in every one of these bowls. It was a night of a half moon, and the outline of every bowl was visible. We battled moby stripers all the way back to Old Harbor Point, totaling nine fish between 35 and 45 pounds, all on loaded 7-inch Red Fins and Hellcats.

The east side of the island had some of the most classic striper water in the world. We walked back to the truck and still had 8 hours to fish. The nights were endless, and so was the fishing.

Another Thanksgiving Blitz

On Thanksgiving night in 1984, we were hoping for another blitz like the year before, but we never could have guessed that we were about to have the greatest two days of fishing of our lives. My friend Marty and I decided to start the night at the Southwest Point rock bar. When we got there, we found it deserted. The conditions were flat calm and the tide was just starting to go out. The fishing was slow. We kept wading farther and farther out on the bar, until I started getting little bumps on the black-and-chrome loaded 7-inch Red Fin.

I made five more casts and felt five more bumps. They kept tapping the plug. I switched to a fluorescent green and chrome Red Fin and cast it out, barely reeling and letting the current move it very slowly.

BANG! A hit of explosive strength, and the fish took a run down to the backing on my reel. He stopped and I reeled a little, and then he took off again several times. This was a fish of a lifetime!

Eventually I got him up to the shallow part of the rock bar, but it was such a big fish that I couldn’t get it over the shallow bar. It ran again, and I spent another 15 minutes working it back in. With my heart pounding in my chest, I was finally able to beach the fish on the rock bar. When I bent to pick it up, its weight told me it was a special fish. It took me a moment to collect myself, and with the giant fish in my hand, I gazed around at the beauty of Southwest Point, whispering aloud, “The rock, the rock…”

The first cast after the cow, I was instantly into another fish. This turned out to be a 46-pound striped bass. My partner was landing a fish as well, a 48-pounder. This blitz went on through the
entire outgoing tide. Those fish tore apart many of our Red Fins and needlefish plugs, crushing and straightening many of the hooks. Our fishing tackle was no match for these giant striped bass, and we lost as many as we caught.

They physically tore us apart, too. To catch this many massive fish in the rock-strewn waters of Block Island was a great challenge. In my innermost thoughts, I still pour over all the stripers of ’83 and ’84 that I hooked and then lost – I believe some of them could have been world records. They were so huge! I have no doubt that these fish were from the same school that hit Pochet Hole on Nauset Beach in the blitz of 1981.

When morning came, I weighed my fish on a certified scale. It registered at 61 ¼ pounds. I had joined the “60” club! I was only 26 years old, and I had already lived a charmed striped bass fisherman’s life from the beaches of Cape Cod to the shores of Block Island. I knew immediately that I would fulfill a dream of mine and go to the greatest taxidermist of our time, Wally Brown, to mount my 61-pound striped bass.

The final tally for Thanksgiving night for my partner and me was 23 giant striped bass, ranging from 37 to 61 pounds. The next night I walked down to Southwest Point, and on my first cast of the night, using a large wooden Don Musso needlefish, I caught a 51-pound striped bass that I released in the bowl at Southwest Point. As I revived the 51-pounder, I felt the strength of its massive
tail push off and swim away – there are no words to describe the feeling. I left a piece of my soul on Southwest Point that night, feeling so blessed to catch a 61-pound striped bass and then release a 51-pounder the next night.

The blitz was the same on that second night. My partner and I had 21 more striped bass from 35 to 51 pounds. The majority of fish from these two special nights were in the mid- to high-40’s. One week later at Southwest Point, a surf fisherman shattered the Rhode Island record for striped bass with a 70-pound giant.

For those two years, my crew and I were part of the great Block Island era of surfcasting. It was a gift to us.

Several years later, on a hot and calm day in July 2007, I sat with my wife and two young children on a quiet, deserted Southwest Point. I reflected on how 25 years ago, this sleepy island was responsible for some of the best striped bass surf fishing ever experienced. As the years continue to roll past, I can only hope this great era will not be forgotten. The men who fished then knew well the spirit of this island, and it will be in our hearts forever.