The Tilefish Ache

The five-hour drive from Point Pleasant, NJ to Falmouth, MA on Tuesday night flew by as I replayed the aching-arm, cramped-hand and sore-back bliss of the past two days of tilefishing aboard the Voyager.

I’d gotten my first taste of deep-drop fishing last winter aboard the Viking Fleet out of Montauk, and had been eager to get back to the tilefish grounds ever since.

I had one goal on the trip—hook my first tilefish. It took longer for my 2-pound sinker to reach bottom than it did for me to check that box. At any given time during the two-day trip, it seemed like someone was swinging a blueline over the rail or calling for the gaff when a big golden showed deep color.

Fishing the depths where tilefish live (400 to 800-plus feet) comes with unavoidable tangles and plagues of dogfish, but when your cooler is full of “enough tile to redo the bathroom floor,” as one angler put it, you tend not to mind. It also helped that, the Voyager’s excellent mates made quick work of both nuisances.

Every fisherman should try deep-drop fishing at least once. For some, the aching joints from one trip’s worth of cranking sinkers measured in pounds from depths measured in hundreds of feet is enough. For others, that same ache is what keeps them coming back because it conjures images of bent rods, full coolers, and flecks of gold shining through cobalt water.