You Never Know!

Story by Dave Conroy

My 12 year old son Tyler has kept my own fishing passion alive. When I am tired and ready to hit the couch, he often raises his eyebrow and says “the truck is ready”.

He usually has it loaded with fishing gear suited for anything from freshwater mini ponds to the Cape Cod Canal before I can say no.

Last Saturday he wanted to fish from the surf something terrible. We headed to Poppanessett to try for blues and any schoolies that may be cruising around. It was a great day. Although we caught only one small schoolie, we got a whopper of a blue, 2 dozen hefty sea robins and a mess of northern Kingfish. Bumping bucktails and tins in the sandy bottom was the trick of the day. We were pretty wiped out by early afternoon, and I was ready to head back home to Bellingham, an hour and 20 minutes away.

He got that spark in his eye and begged me to teach him to fish with live eels. I caved once again and we got cleaned up at my Dad’s place in East Falmouth. We then snuck in Falmouth bait and tackle at closing, and got half a dozen eels.

We were heading to Falmouth harbor, an easy place to fish with street lights and good parking when not too crowded. I figured the harbor to be as good a place as any to show him the ins and outs of eel fishing, without having to brave rocky shores with headlamps.

I expected very little.

The boat traffic through the harbor was brutal, and we managed to snag the only parking space left at the time, it was very busy.

Waiting for dusk, we tried bottom fishing for scup and anything else that might be hanging around but did not get a bite. We threw plugs for the remainder of daylight with no action.

A thick, cool fog bank was overwhelming everything and the boat traffic came to a halt. I showed him how to rig a sluggish, iced down eel, gave it a couple of retrieves and he was confident to go off on his own at the end of the jetty.

I stayed at the pier of the harbor, watching the last of the boats head in. I saw a big flock of birds dipping quite a ways out just before the fog rolled in, and had just a slight hope something might be hanging around, ready to cruise through the channel of the harbor mouth.

My fist lobbing cast made it half way across the channel. The tide was coming in, but still not optimum by any means. Quite a bit of weed was floating on the surface, and I was waiting for it to snag on my eel.

It was still fairly light out, I could make out Tyler at the end of the jetty reeling in way too fast as usual. Too excited!

As I gave my reel another half turn, I felt a sharp tap and instinctively dropped my rod. Pressure came immediately and I reared back expecting a nice little fight from a feisty schoolie.

The drag sounded on my hook set, and I had a legitimate bass ready for battle solidly hooked at the business end of my rig. I was dumbfounded.

People started to gather as my drag tore out on 4 different occasions starting the battle over again on each run. I was starting to get nervous, the bass was coming in and heading for the pilings. I had my 11 foot surf rod, which helped me to turn that fat head away from the wood.

After 15 minutes the fish was good and tired, and coming in. I gave Tyler my pole, had my wife stand on my feet and I swung my body down over the edge of the harbor to grab the big maw.

My fingers slipped under the big flaring gill plate and I dragged it up into my lap. Tyler was going ballistic, and tackled the fish. He had to heft it, the largest striper we had ever caught together from the surf.

My initial plan was to release it, but the fish was spent. We tried for about ten minutes to revive it leaning over that harbor edge, but it was done.

We pulled it up again and pictures started clicking from all over. Not many people were fishing, but a lot of people who had been just hanging out started to crowd around.

That fish really had no business being there at that time but as they always say, “you just never know!”

What a great fish, and a memory we will talk about forever.