D O CK B UZZ

Smiling in the Surf

It was December 28, 2015. After 41 years of chasing the trophy striped bass of a promote the conservation of fully grown adult fish, as most of the time they are lifetime, success came in one all too fleeting moment. the breeders of the species. In front of me lay a 50-lb. class cow carrying millions

Northeast winds of 35 to 40 knots propelled a sleet storm that pummeled my of eggs, possibly seeding generations of bass to come. I knew I should release it, face while I stood on the beach looking at a nasty, 7-ft New Jersey surf. I punched but this bass was the biggest I knew I would probably ever catch from the surf. It an Ava 27 jig with an orange tail and a 5-in. Tsunami sand eel teaser through the was literally like winning the lottery, the odds can be that profound. So naturally, 28-degree air and it landed just past the second breaker. When the jig hit the high on the moment, I was going to take this bass home with me, contact a skilled water, I clicked over the bail and it felt like my lure hit a piece of dock or telephone taxidermist and pay for the most beautiful skin-mount striper. It would hang on pole that had been sent adrift by the Noreaster’s pounding. But after a few my wall for generations, paying tribute to the beauty of the linesider that took 41 seconds, it began to move, peeling drag off a 10,000-class reel and 12-ft. rod and years of dedicated surf fishing to land. heading out into the whitewater. My adrenaline still pumping, I snapped three quick shots of the fish on the

The fight was long and arduous. I ran down the beach, staying in front of sand and quickly put the camera back in my wader pocket. Then I just stopped the fish to keep the hook lodged, knowing it was a and stared at the fish before me. class of fish I had never hooked into before and might This was a striper—by boat or by It was one of those quintessential never see again. Finally, the spike dorsal fin breached surf—that barely one percent of people moments when time seems to the surface in one foot of whitewater and I promptly stand still and everything on walked backward, pulling the bruiser-striped bass will ever catch in a lifetime of pursuit. the planet just comes to a halt. out of the surf and onto the sand. The blood rushing I felt total calm, yet a lifetime of to my head was almost enough to make me pass out—a striped bass worthy of memories flooded my thoughts. I thought of being just six years old in 1980, when a lifetime of angling was laying in front of me. I bent down and measured the striper stocks were nearly extinct, and how my mother signed fake sick notes so I surf striper at 50 inches long with a 30-in. girth. By IGFA calculations, it weighed could play hooky from school and travel down to the Jersey Shore with my father between 51 and 55 pounds. In the Northeast, this was a striper—by boat or by and brother to surf fish. We’d catch little bass of 20 to maybe 30 inches to bring surf—that barely one percent of people will ever catch in a lifetime of pursuit. home to mom for the dinner table. I thought of years of casting for stripers with

I looked down at the bass and my mind reeled, faced with the greatest fishing family and friends, thousands of days when we took advantage of any available conundrum of my career. You see, as a professional angler and writer, I always time to forget about the worries of life and just go fishing. I thought of my dad.

He would be proud to see that and then with a violent shake, fish mounted on my wall. He slapped her big broom tail in my would have said I earned it, and it face, spraying me with water as would prove the years of sleepless I loosened my grip. She swam, nights, lost relationships, missed full of energy, back through the work days and all the lost time pounding surf. She was free, and I otherwise spent with humanity was even more free. were somehow worth it. There would be no pictures of

I bent down to unhook the her on the scale at tackle shops, teaser from the mouth of the A 50-lb. class striper, and the fish of a lifetime just before its release. or interviews with magazines and striper, and in that moment, I Photo: Nick Honachefsky. TV outlets of the fish of a lifetime, realized that I had yet to even or even a mount to hang on my crack a smile while catching wall that I could show friends this bass. It was then that I knew what I must do. I lipped the mouth of the bass and family over the years. There would be no such glory. As I stood up after her with my two bare hands, then shifted one underneath its belly and promptly release, soaking wet and waves crashing over me, I realized a smile as far and walked down into the surf, step by step, and lowered the bass into the crashing wide as the sunrise breaking over the Atlantic horizon was plastered across my whitewater. She slipped into the cold saltwater in a frozen moment of silence, face. A smile that had been building for a lifetime.