On most spring days I drop the shades in my office because I can’t bare to look outside. Beyond the open window are rays from a very bright sun that touch and warm the cool ground below. Everything is in full bloom and the smells from wildflowers and lilacs are delicious. Their colors are vibrant under the pale blue skies. Warm southerlies carry an intoxicating combination of the ocean’s salt and the inland’s honeysuckles. . . how can a man work under such conditions?
You’d think after a long winter of cold, dark, wet and gray, the warmth and radiance would be inviting. And it would indeed if I were able to enjoy it, but that hasn’t been the case recently. The accounts payables bin is stacked higher than the accounts receivables, and that’s short-handle for “I have to work.”
But don’t feel bad for me just yet, for in the spring I become a vampire, stalking stripers by night.
It’s turkey and striper season out here. Civilized men and women turkey hunt in the morning, take a nap, and fish for trout or largemouth bass in the afternoon. Out here in my Cape Cod dunes it’s reversed. I fish for striped bass at night, head to the turkey woods at false dawn, and make my way to work arriving approximately on time.
The tide tells me when to fish. Sometimes I’ll start when the sun drops. Other times I go to sleep promptly after dinner, catch four or five hours of shut eye, then head out around midnight to fish. A high tide at 11 p.m. means I can fish the outgoing until around 4 a.m. After that, I trade my waders for camo and head for the woods. By 8 a.m. I’ll switch again into my street clothes. During turkey and striper season I change outfits about as often as a runway model.
Get your rods it’s fishing time
I remember one spring when the full moon’s brightness lit up the area so well that I didn’t need a flashlight. I stood on the bank of an estuary and felt the warm westerly wind come across my left shoulder. Riding on the breeze were the popping sounds of feeding fish. They were too far away to see, but I heard them as easily as a birddog’s clanging bell. After a short walk down the beach, I waded out towards the bar.
A pod of stripers held on the current on the outside edge. They weren’t far away, maybe 50 or 60 feet. I stripped off some fly line and began to cast. A few mends swung my Big Eelie down to the fish, and on the first cast my line went tight. It was a schoolie, a fresh fish, with sea lice moving all over it’s black and purple sides and white underbelly. My second cast produced another, my third another, and it went on like that for two hours. These were easy fish to catch. Hungry from their migration, they ate like champs.
At 4 a.m. it was time to head to the turkey woods. That corker of a night gave me high hope as I drove to the woods. I was giddy thinking about that big tom I’d been working all week. With fishing so hot, I would have bet my left arm that he’d strut right in at 15 yards. I imagined looking down my barrel rib, my finger tip squeezing the trigger, the big bird flopping on the ground.
I stopped at the gate by the abandoned fire road. Off in the distance I heard the roosted gobblers trash talking to no end. There were gobbles to the left, double gobbles to the right – these birds were hot. My dream of a perfect cast and blast was at hand, all I needed to do was close the deal.
I set up against a big pine and gave a soft yelp that was answered immediately. I waited a bit, yelped again, and thunder echoed through the woods. This game of cat-and-mouse went on for an hour after fly down. Then the woods grew quiet. I waited for as long as I could.
My watch reminded me that worktime was at hand, so I looked around the brush and bramble to be sure no birds had snuck in. My “blast” faired poorly compared to my “cast,” and that was a shame. But tomorrow was another day, so I set my shotgun on the ground and stood up. It was then that boss gobbler putted and ran out from behind my tree! Dang, son.
On my drive home, I thought about the pilgrims when they explored Buzzard’s Bay. There were so many “vultures” roosting in the trees, they named the Bay in their honor. Turns out those birds weren’t buzzards at all, but rather wild turkeys.
It’s fortunate that the flocks were so plentiful. If they weren’t, we all might be enjoying an oily, fish-eating merganser on Thanksgiving Day.
Stripers and turkeys – it’s what spring is all about around Pilgrim Town.