There are many ways to not catch striped bass. Some methods are illegal, such as spear fishing. Others lack common sense, such as dressing as a bait fish and attempting to catch them with your bare hands. However, the ones that I’ve been discovering are more nuanced. As a novice striper fisherman who just figured out how to cast properly, my luck has been poor. My fishing experiences this season have forced me to practice patience, stew in obsession, and get lost walking around a barren Atlantic island.
Sometimes You Have to Suck at Something
Like most folks, I hate being bad at things. And I have a bad habit of avoiding things that I’m bad at unless I’m forced to improve. In college, for example, I struggled using Matlab. Matlab is a pretty ubiquitous software in engineering that allows you to do complex math and simulations. Instead of working hard to understand its particular coding language and improving my skills, I did the bare minimum to pass the class it was part of and minimized my contributions to the Matlab portions of group projects. Don’t worry, I more than made up for that in the realm of hand calculations and report writing. I was only forced to get better in grad school, where most of my classes and all my thesis work were done in Matlab. Now I’m quite competent in Matlab and use it daily in my job. Right now though, I’m working on another thing I’m bad at: striper fishing.
My Fishing Background
I go saltwater fishing consistently through from the spring through the fall on my grandfather’s boat. We typically do ground fishing for tautaug in the spring, black sea bass in early summer, fluke in mid summer, and anything that we can catch in late summer/fall. We don’t do any casting and I never caught a striper. This year, with new twins, I needed something that I could do for an hour or two to have some time to myself. Fishing was the obvious answer, but in the form of shore casting. I learned quickly that this took a whole different skill set from my usual jigging. The casting itself is very important. Having good range and accuracy on casts means the difference between landing a fish and coming up empty. Instead of a sinker and a hook with bait, a catalogue of lures, each with different uses, are used for casting. Not only was there a learning curve in technique, there’s also a learning curve in gear!
My Goal Turned Obsession
The difference between catching a striper and Matlab is that I definitely want to catch a striper. I’ve made it my big goal of the year. Back at Christmas I asked for a few lures to help me cut down on the cost of entry. I borrow one of my grandfather’s casting rods when I go out. I’ve gone out a few times in search of the elusive migratory fish and each time I’ve returned empty handed. I’ve seemingly had a different misfortune occur every time. Instead of embittering me, it’s only driven me further towards obsession. I don’t want to catch a striper anymore, I NEED to catch a striper.
How I Didn't Catch Striped Bass (So Far)
So far I am 0 for 3 in my serious pursuits of a striper. The first time I went out, it was raining for the full hour and a half that I went. The rain soaked through my jacket. The second time, I ambitiously went to a state park (the Atlantic island that I mentioned earlier). I ended up walking for over three miles on the beach, carrying my rod, cooler, and tackle box the whole way. I even got turned around at one point on the walking paths, walking a whole mile more than I had to. The third time, I hooked my plug on some unknown object on the bottom of the Cape Cod Canal. I could reel it all the way up to the surface but couldn’t see what it was stuck on in the darkness. A fourth time I went out just to practice casting, with the idea that maybe I could trick the ocean into giving up a fish. Not even psychological tricks on the ocean worked. Instead, my line snapped and I lost another plug.
The Biggest Issue is Perspective
There’s an issue of focus with my fishing failures. I’ve spent a lot of time dwelling on the fish I didn’t catch or the plugs that are sitting at the bottom of the sea. Instead, I should think about the positives. On that first rainy night, I fished with a friend from New Hampshire. Even though we didn’t catch anything, it was great to catch up. Then my wife and I went out for breakfast the next morning with him and his wife. that island state park that I got lost on is beautiful. I rarely saw another soul while I was there, so I was able to practice casting without fear on embarrassment. Before I lost my plug in the Canal, I was having a nice time talking with my dad. Using this perspective, my fishing trips have at least been a net success. It will still take me a day or so to see it the next time I come home empty handed.