By Dave Anderson

It was cold last night. And two days of easterlies dropped the water temps too. A hard west made casting a breeze from the east-facing rock, but also made me thankful for the neoprene jacket I’d pulled over my wetsuit as a last minute decision. Stepping into the cool ocean water was not the comfort that it often is after an extended hike in late-July, it was more like a firewalk or succumbing to peer pressure—something you make yourself do despite not really wanting to, something you do so you won’t have to endure hours of self-flagellation later. I waded deeper until my feet could no longer reach bottom and began the 70-yard swim to a large offshore boulder.
 
Midnight had already passed when my feet found the submerged reef, I rested there in the water, catching my breath, the ocean was cold, but I knew the hard wind and 48 degree air temps would be worse. I stood and turned my back to the wind, as a gallon of sea water drained from my plug bag. I had tied an eel leader on before leaving the house and so the plugs would have to wait. I swung the eel bag around and pulled a 15-incher from the writhing pile of shiny black, hooked it and hastily lobbed it into the water, in an effort to keep it from balling up in my leader.
 
I made three casts, reeling slowly, methodically pausing every few cranks, allowing the eel to settle deeper. About halfway through my fourth cast, I felt like something wasn’t right with my connection to the eel, maybe it was weeded up, maybe I had allowed too much of a belly in the line. Whatever it was, I burned the eel in to investigate and as the bait approached the wash of waves in front of me, I felt a deep thump and slow pressure peeling away, pulling the rod down. I struck back with a deep thump of my own, driving the hook home and sending what felt like a solid striper on a hard run seaward. A few minutes later I slid a fish in the low 20s onto the rock beside me.
 
After a few more casts a very similar thing happened; the eel entered the wash, hung up and when I shook it free, boom, a fish crushed it, found the hook and then came unbuttoned. Looking back this morning, I feel like I want to dope-slap myself for not recognizing the very obvious pattern here. I stuck with the eels for another hour, fishing them the same old way with very little action before my mind wandered enough to put it together. And it’s not like last night was the first time I’ve come to this realization, there are times when the fish are keyed in on a reactionary bite and playing the cat-and-mouse game is often the key.
 
The water in this spot is quite deep for a surf spot, so I tied on a deep-running metal lip and fished it in a vigorous stop and go fashion. I hooked up right away to a fish that looked to be a touch under 20 pounds. All of a sudden I was getting a hit or a hookup every second or third cast, but sadly, the tide window was closing. Soon the modest rip would dissipate and, history had proved that, the bite would go with it. A few more teen fish took the swimmer before I hooked one with some shoulders. The fish held its ground, never ran, she just held deep and kept shaking her head and banging the rocks. I leaned on the fish and lifted her off the bottom. She turned to make a move and straightened the forward treble on the swimmer. That would be my last hit of the night.
 
I have always been a big believer in matching the attitude of the fish. This is why a Magic Swimmer reeled at light speed can be so effective in a blitz, it’s playing into the jacked-up nature of a pack of competitive fish. The same could be said for dead-sticking a dead eel on a bright moon night. The bass are often very cautious under the moon, especially with calm seas. It’s these times when the fish give us all the clues and we still fail to connect the dots that serve the dual purpose of mind-numbing frustration and experience gained, a hard lesson learned—not soon to be forgotten.
 
All that, and I still had to swim back. 

By Dave Anderson

​Standing at the edge of the stream, full dark, fogged in. I heard the approaching sloshing footsteps of my fishing partner’s boots treading the marsh, no rods… still March. He stopped a few feet away and we listened. The wind came up from the northwest, driving the cool fog down the neck of my jacket, I hunched over and leaned away from the wind, I listened harder. The tiny freshwater brook ran through a series of riffles, humming a consistent pitch—babbling a constant rhythm. Then we heard what we were listening for; the splashy bursts of herring tails beating hard against the current, preparing to run the shallow riffle ahead. It’s a sound that’s as indicative of the spring season as Christmas carols are to the holidays; at least for me. This shallow run is imprinted on the instinctive DNA of every herring born in this waterway; I know this because the fish only run at night here; they’re too vulnerable in daylight and they know this. It makes this stream unique.
 
I’d heard it hundreds of times before, but this time the sounds of those herring powering upstream, sparked an epiphany—well, let’s call it a potential epiphany. The beats of those tails and the fish’s unwavering devotion to completing their spawning tasks sent my mind into a silent dialogue about instinctual drive, predatory behavior and the way we all typically fish a herring run.
 
These herring are born in the pond, then spend a good portion of their lives offshore in vast schools, their instincts call them back to the stream to spawn. Impressive doesn’t even begin to describe that drive to procreate. If there was a way to translate these instincts into human thought, it would probably be something more intense than anything we have felt. This, it occurred to me, should weigh heavily in how we fish a herring run.
 
When we are fishing near the mouth of a run, those herring are in the home stretch, after hundreds of miles and a whole year or more at sea, being pestered by untold numbers of predatory fish, diving birds, nets, seals… they run riffles and climb fish ladders, they surge through flood waters and leap obstacles and here we are throwing a lazy Danny plug. In a rush of inspired thought—admittedly augmented by the sudden exercising of the fishing part of my brain—I saw the light on fishing the runs.
 
I have always been one to fish away from the run itself, favoring a deep cut or prominent obstacle in the shoreline nearby, my reasoning was that predator fish could use these things as an ambush and they also forced the herring, which often run in very shallow water, to swim over or around an area that made them vulnerable to predation. It worked, but it never worked great. Then I thought back to a full moon night in early May, standing at the mouth of a run, making a few obligatory casts before moving to one of my more classic locales. I heard bass blowing up on herring—I clipped on a Danny—nothing, as usual. One of my casts was fouled with weed and I burned the plug in, about 8 feet off the tip a fish blew up on the skittering Danny, but missed. I tied on a 2-ounce Pencil Popper and worked it wildly in the waning current sent seaward by the herring stream. I hooked up on my first cast with a smallish bass, right around keeper size. I had a couple other hits, but passed it off as a full moon anomaly.
 
My herring run epiphany has since told me otherwise. The instincts of a spawning fish put that task above all other things and when they’re nearing the sanctuary of their natal stream, you can bet that they are going to run that predatory gauntlet hard and fast. Every cautious swirl I’d ever had while fishing near a run flashed across the screen in my mind’s eye. I always chalked it up to there simply being too much bait, but I have seen the light. Now I feel that it’s more likely that the bass were confused by atypical behavior. In a lifetime of hunting herring in the runs every spring, a slow, lazy herring just didn’t seem right. And so, they followed, but ultimately ignored it. In all aspects of my plug fishing I have long felt that mimicking the attitude of the bait was a key to success, somehow I had missed the boat here.
 
As we prepare to enter the herring season—in some places it’s already begun—my focus for this exciting time of year is going to be on plugs I can fish fast. Tops on my list will be the Sebile Magic Swimmer. Instead of trying to mimic some battered herring on its last leg, I’m going to be trying to channel that instinctual drive to climb the stream and get it on. Casting that swimmer out there and burning it in, throwing a big wake and daring any bass in the area to pass up on the chance to take it down. I think it’s going to work.
 
What do you think?

By John P. Lee

During this last coastal storm, while the rest of us were worrying about power outages and downed trees, John was out on the Sound earning a buck...

By Dave Anderson
​
I just wanted to take a minute to let everyone know that John and I will be combining forces to give an in depth seminar titled “Spot Science” at the end of this month. We will combine our knowledge drawing from years of surfcasting, bait observation, boat fishing and diving to paint—what we hope will be—a clearer picture of the types of locations that are most likely to attract sizeable stripers to the inshore waters that surfcasters target throughout the year. There will be diagrams, underwater video and in depth analysis of several scenarios that produce big fish year after year. So come check us out at River’s End Surf Day, Saturday, March 24th (check back here or on River’s End Facebook Page for the exact time). The event is being held at River’s End Tackle, 440 Boston Post Rd, Old Saybrook, CT. We hope to see you all there!

By John P. Lee

We’ve had some weather lately in the Northeast, a run of gales.  I work on a pilot boat out of Point Judith, Rhode Island. The boat is 64-feet long, but even so in a gale it becomes tiny. Here’s a short video I made last night before we headed out. A gale at sea at night is not a calming experience, not a yoga class. Back when I was a commercial fisherman, fishing offshore in the winter—one would think I would’ve gotten used to winter weather. Not the case. A nighttime gale still makes me restless, eyes peering into the darkness waiting for the next set. 

By Dave Anderson

August 2017 came with the some of the best fishing... probably ever, in the Cape Cod Canal. An abundance of bait and bass presented anglers with the perfect storm that evolved into an endurance test. It also presented me with a very unique opportunity in that I was able to capture a wolfpack of stripers working an eddy and their reaction to pencil popper that included a fully committed strike. We hope you will enjoy the video and learn something from it; I know I certainly did. 

By Dave Anderson

My wife and I often talk about the fact that we lead double lives, she is an elementary school teacher, and it’s kind of odd that I will never experience her classroom persona. In the same way, she will never experience my true fishing personality—sure, we’ve fished together, but my focus is on her, I am not concentrating on catching; my mind isn’t working as an angler, it’s working as a husband. And you can bet that she’s never going to swim to a rock on a new moon night!
 
Lila, my three year old daughter, on the other hand, sees another side of me that really no one else sees. She’s so innocent and up for anything that she sees the version of ‘me’ that is as close to the ‘alone’ me as anyone will ever get. I think (hope) that everyone has that person in their head that whispers things that could never be said out loud, sings silly—often crude—parody lyrics over familiar songs on the radio, has a certain pride for the smell and timbre of their own farts… that sort of thing. Her innocence and aptitude bring out the narrator in me and instead of just walking the beach, trudging through the woods, silently enjoying the site of a pair of sharp-shinned hawks or picking up an arrowhead, I find myself speaking almost everything I see for her benefit.
 
This has led to many silent victories of pride, “Daddy, shhh, hear that? That’s a blue jay!” “Look a deer scrape.” “I heard an owl!” “Is that a turkey vulture...?” ​Or the one that rocks me to the core, “Daddy, I think I got one!”

By John P. Lee

By Dave Anderson

​This little false hint of a January thaw has awakened that need to drive to the ocean and just… see it. Any spot will do, it’s that inherent energy that the ocean holds that makes these short trips therapeutic. Today, after I dropped my daughter at preschool, I found myself following a familiar road, heading out of my way to a place that holds many memories. Following the footprints of a much younger and greener me, into a place that would become a major part of my story.
 
I first walked these beaches in the winter of 2005 when I found my way into a very exclusive neighborhood; as I skipped out onto the exposed ledges, I found a spot that screamed big stripers. It had everything; deep water, drastic depth changes, changes in bottom composition… The first time I fished it that spring the fishing was amazing with fish from 28 to almost 40 pounds. The next night was even better.
 
Needless to say, I became a regular at this spot. But as spring gave way to summer, I learned very quickly that a security guard was stationed in the neighborhood so that the ‘summer people’ could enjoy their high-priced paradise without worrying about any of the ‘underprivileged’ population sneaking in to enjoy a quick peek of the breathtaking view or—worse—marring it by leaving footprints in the sand that weren’t left by a fellow millionaire. It’s funny how money cultivates feelings of entitlement, but I’m jumping the tracks here.

​After a few years of being asked to leave in the summer, I finally found a way in that only required that I keep the use of my light to a minimum. I was parking in a hayfield about a mile from the gate and walking in. By that time I knew exactly where the guard parked his vehicle and that he spent almost the entire night sitting in there listening to the radio. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he had a job to do and he could not be persuaded to look the other way. The only tenuous part of walking in was that I had to pass within 200 feet of his vehicle, but if I ducked into a driveway and walked a short distance behind a stone wall and some shrubs, he could not see me unless he was really focusing on that one area—he never saw me, not even once.
 
There were a few times though that his intuition seemed like it told him that someone had avoided detection and was out there exploiting the land and water he was there to ‘protect’. His downfall was that he seemed to be afraid of the dark; he NEVER shut his ginormous flashlight off. The jittering beam would precede his arrival by as much as five minutes, like a freight train rounding a bend on a moonless night. It never occurred to him to look on any of the rocks out in the water, and I’m sure training his eyes on that glowing beam killed his night vision anyway, so he never made me—again, not even once.
 
One summer night I was in there, hitting all of my usual spots, slinging eels—near perfect conditions, I’d only have wished for more wave action. I was on a short boulder that jutted out from the gravel beach when I saw the beam, waving like a lightsaber, 20 feet over my head on the bluff. I wasn’t worried, but I moved to a lower spot to make the most of the height of the boulder behind me. He walked down from the bluff and looked around for 10 minutes, I kept casting while he stumbled and searched just 25 yards behind me. He climbed back up and disappeared. I moved down the beach, further from where his car was parked and resumed my nightly ritual.
 
The fishing was just not coming together, and Mr. Rent-A-Cop was really testing his training. He showed up again, right behind me… it was a dark—no moon—he didn’t see me. The lack of fish was bothering me, half of me wanted to leave but the other half wanted to take on the challenge of salvaging the night. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t risk walking back down the road because Chief Wiggam was on the prowl, so I decided to fish my way down the mile of shoreline that lead back to the field where I had parked.
 
It should come as no surprise that my decision yielded zero fish and zero hits. As I stood at the shore, making my final casts, I hoped that I had lined myself up in a way that would offer a direct route to the car. I climbed the steep embankment and saw that I was roughly in the right spot, but that a thick patch of bramble and briars separated the shoreline from the field. Looking left, I saw that there was a long section of mowed grass leading from the water to a large house up near the road.
 
I thought about the hour, it was very late. I thought about the walk back and having to ninja my way through the neighborhood to avoid the guard. I decided I would walk through the yard and hope for the best.
 
When I do something like this I often find myself locked into a cyclical inner monologue. I imagine what might happen if someone caught me and then I think about the best story I could tell that would diffuse the situation and disarm my accuser. I always settle on having lost my way and selling the desperation of being ‘lost’ and ‘in a panic’… worried wife… work the next day… you get the idea. The reason for repeating it over and over, I think, is to get the tone and inflection right, make myself believe it before I have to say it out loud.
 
So I was walking up this million dollar lawn, sometime after 1 a.m., muttering and refining my excuse as I went. The house was white, standing out stark against the shadowy darkness of the trees around it. As I approached, I noticed that the property line was pitching in, forcing me to walk closer and closer to this modest vacation home—it was summer with a light sea breeze, windows would most definitely be open. My stride modulated to half speed as I concentrated on placing each step. My main concern switched to being exposed by a motion-activated flood light, luckily they didn’t have one. As I tip-toed past the east wing of the sprawling estate, I was passing a set of tall windows when a light flicked on inside, my body went cold with dread as my eyes instinctively fixed on the figure inside. My synapses were firing at record speed, processing worry, readying an excuse, fighting the urge to run… but the rush of emotions fell dead in the height of the moment. My brain was short-circuited by the amount of flesh I was seeing. Here was a man, probably late-60’s. Bald on top with wild bed head gray hair wrapping the sides. His face wore the grimace of trying to stay mostly asleep—he was the opposite of alert. He was short and portly and moving slowly. He was also bare-ass! And I saw it all. Everything from his alarmingly dangly testicles to his scruffy—steel wool—chest hair. He turned and I instantly felt bad for his proctologist. “Should’a been a podiatrist..”
 
All of the drama leading up fell flat in a whispered, yet exasperated, muffled huff, “Jesus-fucking-Christ!” My new challenge was trying to get out of there before bursting out laughing. As I rounded the pillars at the top of the driveway, I knew I had made it. The cold chill of alertness was replaced by the seeping warmth of fatigue. I felt like I didn’t know what to do with that mental image; all I could do was laugh. I don’t remember what year that was, but we all have memories that never leave us; the birth of a child, big fish caught or lost, little league home runs, falling in love… and unfortunately, this man’s… everything, seems be stored on that same kind of encrypted memory. So thanks mystery millionaire, you don’t know it, but I own a part of you and I cannot—for the life of me—get rid of it. 

By John P. Lee

​Ice fishing is good for the soul. There is something about it. The starkness of winter, the long afternoon shadows, the sound of expanding ice cracking from cove to cove. I think it’s good for the mind to stand above the fish and drill holes and set tilts. It’s more trapping than fishing, more like setting lobster pots than casting plugs. This mindset is not for everyone, spreading out your tilts over a wide area, covering ground. But it is not passive, the drilling and moving, the thought about where the fish could be, takes energy.  And then when the fish bites and the flag pops, there is that moment as you walk over to the hole and see the spool spinning and kneel before it, your fingers on the line, feeling, feeling, then setting with your wrists. The battle is fought with your hands. How old is that tradition? Then the fish’s head is at the hole and it comes through and flops onto the ice. The colors of the fish seem to bloom in defined contrast to the monochrome ice. The perch are vibrant, the bass, the trout.  I also love how affordable it is, for all people, the opposite of trying to catch a grander marlin off the Great Barrier Reef or Kona. The fish are right there somewhere in the lake or pond, right there below our feet.  Enjoy these photos. I took them early in the season this year, right when the black ice set up, ice so transparent you could see bottom. Clear and bitter cold, my blood felt both frozen and fully alive.