Column: Fishing with Dinah Washington
Proof: Our columnist with the biggest striped bass he’s caught on his boat in a decade.
In last week’s column I was pretty vocal complaining about how capricious the spring weather had been and how it was slowly improving as we approached the end of May.
Even though we had been getting a few fish here and there I was hoping it would warm up a bit, but even more than that, I wanted the ever-present stiff winds to get tired of blowing. Then, the weather forecast for May 28 predicted wind speeds would drop to a mere 10 m.p.h. and temperatures would move up to the mid-60s. A good omen and I hoped the fish were paying attention, too.
A little nostalgia to set the stage: Some of you may remember the song that Dinah Washington made famous called, “What A Diff’rence a Day Makes.”
It starts: “What a difference a day made, 24 little hours, brought the sun and the flowers, where there used to be rain …” and it continued describing how one event changes the singer’s whole outlook.
That’s what happened to me.
That forecast for May 28 didn’t hold up. It was blowing and cold in the morning, but the sun came out a bit and I decided to give it a shot to see if the fish got the memo. I tried to catch the last of the incoming tide at the back of Coecles Harbor and since there were weeds galore there I put my plugs away and switched to soft plastic “jerk bait” lure called a Fluke.
I managed to land three small stripers there. At about three in the afternoon I noticed the wind speed dropped at least 50 percent, indicating slack tide. I like slack tide for bass since they are a lazy breed and don’t like to fight heavy tides to kill their food if they can help it.
I ran the boat out of the mouth of Coecles and got upwind of the sandbar there and drifted down to it without making any noise to scare the fish. I now had on a yellow popping plug called a Smak-It. On the first cast I got a huge tail-whack hit that knocked the plug flying, indicating that a very large and annoyed bass was in the area.
I made another cast to the seaward side of the bar and missed a few slashing strikes from small fish before getting a second tremendous tail hit followed by a huge “eat the plug” event. I was hooked to a very large bass.
I had my usual 7-foot medium heavy spinning rod with a Penn Battle 4000 reel spooled with 15 pound braided line in my hand — a good outfit for regular sized bass but a bit light for a monster on the end of my line. I fought it for over 10 minutes and when I saw it next to the boat I wondered how I was going to get it in the landing net. It was that big.
Then I wondered how I’d be able to get a photo of it to do it justice if I landed it. No photo — no one believes you.
Looking around for some help, I saw Greg Clements and Chris Royer fishing a spot north of me by about 300 yards. I attracted their attention blowing my boat horn and waving and then netted the fish — barely. They came over to see what they could do and were excited when they saw the fish as I lifted it off the deck. It was 42 inches long, weighed in at 29 pounds and was barely hooked by the time I got it in the boat having pulled one of the sets of treble hooks loose.
Chris got several photos before I took some scale samples for the DEC. Finally, I carefully revived the fish in the water by grasping its bottom lip and “swimming” it around head first, forcing oxygen through the gills. When the bass started to bite down on my thumb and her dorsal went up I let go and watched the fish swim away, a little worse for wear but alive and kicking.
That was the largest bass I’ve taken on my boat in 10 years, and was six inches longer and four pounds heavier than the bass I got on a fly a year and three days earlier. So, as the lady once said, “What a difference a day made.”
If this tale of luck and a bit of good guessing (fishing the slack tide) has you ready to go for the big ones, here’s some advice: Make sure your gear is in shape with fresh line on your reel, you have strong knots tied from line to leader and leader to lure; make sure you have strong hooks on your plugs (if they’re rusty, replace them); and if using a popper, which works great any time of day, vary your retrieve from fast to slow, but always keep the plug popping along in some sort of steady rhythm such as continuous popping like pop, pop, pop, rest and repeat.
Let me know how you do.
