March has been a lion all month. And she doesn’t look to be making her transformation to lamb anytime soon, if we’re going by what the weather folks have to say. There’s not been much fishing to be had recently. Holdover fishing–for both stripers and trout–has been slow. The weather, rain, snow, sleet, gale, power […]
Read moreFish Stories: August Topwater Mayhem
It took some time, but I finally convinced my fiancé, Gelany, to fish on the boat with me at a relatively fishing-centric hour. No, we didn’t catch the pre-dawn bite. We didn’t even get the dawn bite. But we did have lines in the water at a respectable 6:30am, (which, she still complained was still […]
Read moreFish Stories: A big bass in a little canoe
Holding her in the water, I remember thinking that I’d probably never see a bass this large again. I was also thinking that we absolutely did not deserve her. It was October in an off-Cape pond, but the air remained warm. The pond had received its Fall trout stocking, which meant it was the perfect […]
Read morePast Report: June New Moon
Something strange happens around the new moon in June. The waters off Cape Cod, already full of migrating and year-of-young life, explode in a cacophony of energy. The bay becomes crowded. It’s a time of year in which you’d do almost anything to get just a few hours out on that new summer ocean. Alarms […]
Read moreFish Stories: Kettle pond trout fishing in the snow
With whispers coming through the proverbial fishing grapevines that the stocking trucks had begun their semiannual pilgrimage to the various kettle ponds on and off the Cape, I immediately began concocting plans to make my way down to one of these ponds with the fly rod, even if it meant breaking through a thin layer […]
Read moreSigns of spring on the homefront
It felt like Spring this morning. Not the temperature. No, it was freezing. But that smell. And the angle of the sun. And the way the clouds just barely hung over the pond, not a breath of wind to disrupt them. There were some robins in my front yard, contently plucking away at grubs in […]
Read moreFish Stories: Skunked
It’s March 1st, a Friday, and I called in sick, partly because I heard the ‘bows in one of the Cape kettle ponds had started to wake from their groggy sleepwalk, and partly because March 1st is generally the time of year in which I’d do anything to feel the tug on the end […]
Read moreSeason firsts
A fishing season has lots of firsts. There’s a pond by my parent’s house–more so a cranberry bog reservoir than a pond– that’s generally the site of a few season firsts. Some years back, on a warmish Sunday night in March, my Dad, my fiance and I decided to stop by the “Rock Pond” (we […]
Read moreNew Season Resolutions, 2018
At some point during my first hungover day of 2018 (which, not-so-oddly enough, turned out to be the first day of 2018) I began thinking about resolutions. Lying in bed, sipping on a Gatorade, I jotted some things down on a piece of paper. Yes, the words “New Years Resolution” makes me gag a little […]
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