Massachusetts

I’ve just returned from fishing in the Martha’s Vineyard Rod & Gun Club’s Annual Catch-and-Release Tournament. This was my fourth year fishing in the tournament, and it remains one of my favorite trips of the year, a rare occasion where I can focus more on the fishing and less on photography / work. Here are a few notes from the tournament in years past, originally published in The Drake (images are cell phone shots from this year):

Standing at the counter of Coop’s Bait and Tackle, the man himself is working away the afternoon, helping a never-ending stream of visiting and local anglers get their gear sorted for the weekend ahead. With a kind smile and a big heart, Cooper “Coop” Gilkes is a local legend on Martha’s Vineyard, and has run his full-service bait and tackle shop in Edgartown since 1985. This weekend is one of the busiest of the year; the local catch-and-release tournament is bearing down on the island community, bringing in a host of eager regional anglers scouting the beaches and ponds for cruising stripers.

Coop is at the heart of the tournament, and in his inimitable fashion he’s busy helping a local youngster get his kit just right, taking a break only to give a quick casting lesson to a kind lady with a dopey dog the size of a calf. It’s a long week for the veteran Coop, and he’s helped in the shop by his wife Lela, a petite woman with a perpetual smile and a marvelous ability to remember seemingly everyone’s name. Danny and Tina, Coop and Lela’s son and daughter, also help ensure things run smoothly in the packed shop, assisting the island’s anglers through the tournament weekend and, afterward, the rest of the season.

The Martha’s Vineyard Rod and Gun Club annual striped bass catch-and-release tournament takes place every spring, drawing a crowd of local and regional anglers to the shores of the famed island. This year marked the 28th year for the event, which raises funds for the island’s annual Kids’ Trout Derby. Led consummately by the famed Coop, master of ceremonies Nelson Sigelman and other members of the Rod & Gun Club, the tournament is a true local’s taste of this eclectic island. The actual tournament takes place from 7pm Saturday through 2am Sunday, with most anglers fishing hard in the days prior to find fish and discover which flies will “do the trick.”

Northeast striper fishermen are a breed apart from their fly-fishing brethren, and the Vineyard is a gathering place for these stripping-basket-bearing anglers. The weekend is physically demanding; angler Paul Fersen, who has fished the area for years, calls it “astronaut training,” a loving epithet alluding to the particular style of exhaustion that comes from fishing both day and night for days on end. Many anglers will scout around the clock in the days before the tournament, grabbing a few hours’ sleep each dawn before starting the process all over again. There’s something intriguing about finding the point of exhaustion where one’s cast improves drastically before rather remarkably falling apart.

Looking around the room at the faces gathered in the island’s school cafeteria for the awards ceremony on Sunday morning, it’s clear the fishing, in the end, is secondary. Exhausted and emptying coffee urns faster than many would deem safe or sane, the anglers share a common love of the species they’ve spent the weekend chasing: striped bass. An East Coast mainstay, the stripers offer a humble excuse to join together, fish through the night, and raise funds in the hopes more of the island’s children will fall in love with the beguiling sport. At the end of the day, it’s less about who measured the biggest fish, or who claimed the award for most fish caught. For one night, more than a hundred men and women “wader up” and run around the island, sometimes maniacally, searching for stripers.

And it’s a funny thing, fishing saltwater at night. The water takes on another layer of intrigue; it’s easier to let one’s imagination run wild when thigh-deep in cold, dark water and a horseshoe crab suddenly nudges your wading boot. After all, your brain helpfully supplies, this is the home turf of Jaws. The wreck of the Orca lies around the corner, too close for comfort at 1AM under the light of a waning moon. But then, bump, bump, bump, ha! there’s a fish and all overactive thought about what else is cruising around disappears. A hoot in the darkness somewhere off to the left and the flicker of a red headlamp lets you know your teammates have hooked up too, and suddenly the cold night wind doesn’t seem so cold anymore.

There’s magic to be found in fishing, and in the peculiar (sometimes downright strange) things we do in the name of that undertaking. Casting into the vast ocean for cruising fish in the dead of night is a meditative experience, offering a different view into the motions many of us go through on automatic. The weight of the rod in hand becomes the only indicator of cast mechanics, other senses heightening to accommodate the loss of sight. Bumps on the line are like police lights, adrenaline-inducing and sometimes unexpected. The occasional flickers of red light along the shoreline are the only indicators that teammates are still nearby, and it’s easy to imagine oneself alone on the beach, casting to something that may not even be there.

But then with a bump, bump, bump a striper bites and hands automatically move to strip set. Moonlight illuminates the water and it’s possible to hazard a guess at where the line leads. And when that striper comes to hand, well… once experienced, there’s an addiction to be found in the water at night.