I was obsessed with the sea, with boats and especially fishing from the time I was a small child. I don’t know how it happened. Perhaps it was a result of me being born and raised on the Atlantic sea shore where what we called “fresh air” was the scent of the sea breeze, and sea fog and fog horns were common night sounds.
My early life played out within a short walk of Gravesend Bay, and the “Narrows”—the busy port entry between Brooklyn and Staten Island. On the Bay’s shore, I would clamber down among the the gray rip-rap where Atlantic sea waves crashed on windy days. Or fish from a sea splashed rocky perch while watching coastal ships or foreign freighters enter NY Harbor or anchor in Gravesend to await a vacant dock along the Manhattan shore.
At night, sea fogs often enveloped our house. Thick fogs stilled night sounds by muffling all near-by night traffic noises, but a freighter’s mournful fog horns a mile off shore pierced the mists and rattled the loose glass in my bedroom window. Then too on these nights, the clanging bell of the Narrow’s channel buoy could be heard loud and clear.
But if that was not enough, each summer, as a boy, I spent at least two months on Long Island’s North Shore. There too I was only a short bare-foot walk from the sea shore. Not the salty Atlantic, but the inland sea-way of Long Island Sound and the Nissequogue River estuary— a tidal inlet in Smithtown Bay.
There a boy fascinated with fishing could walk to the Nissequogue’s rock-strewn sandy edge where a half mile wide river flowed through green forest to reach the blue water Sound. At full ebb tide, a wonderland of sea life eposed itself for a boy’s discovery.
As one approached Fiddler-Crabs scurried across still wet and pebbly beach-sand sawing their outsized pincer claws as they raced to their excavations to disappear into their neat round holes with its associated sand pile. Farther out where sand gave way to an exposed river bed of pebbles and cobbles, one could turn over half-buried barnacle-encrusted glacially rounded rocks, coated in green sea laver, or crinkly-brown-bladder wrack. Underneath, diverse “zoophyla” life wriggled and crawled when exposed to air and light.
Beneath the raised rock sea worms, called “Blood worms” and many legged “Bristle” polychaete sandworms wriggled in displeasure. Perhaps too there was a part-buried lump of a Quahog shell to be dug up, or the spitting siphon of a Soft-Shell clam, and often a tiny gray shrimp or hermit crab hauling an oversized spiraled drill shell would scurry away when the rock was lifted. These critters were easily collected and dumped into an old “Dinty Moore” tin can with a handful of bladder wrack to keep the lively collection from climbing out.
With the bait pail emitting scratchy sounds of fiddlers attempting escape, a boy could walk only a few paces up stream to a bend in the River. There, sand deposited by river tidal currents is piled up around fallen timbers of an ancient dock . The old wood, streaked with rust from ancient wrought iron spikes, was blackened with time and sea- smoothed, its grainy knotty wood lay partly entombed in sand and pebble.
Emerging from the bed of sand the timbers extended upward on a slope as if to point to the far wooded shore. One wide timber extended a good ten feet out over the water into the river’s deeper channel bed. A young boy could clamber over its slippery surface, to sit, with wet breeches, and cast a hand-line into—for him— “fishy looking” river water.
These old timbers were the the base of an ancient (18th century) dock…long gone then, which two centuries ago served as a ferry pier to carry horse drawn carriages across to the Smith Estate in Nissequogue. Now only a forgotten wreck, just seen as an obstacle to boaters, but well serving the needs of a young boy’s fishing passion.
Fishing on a wreck of an 18th century dock timber one only needed a 30 foot hank of twisted cuttyhunk linen line, a gray and battered 2 oz lead weight and two red thread snelled, long-shanked, flounder hooks. All of which could be rolled up and carried in a boy’s back pocket.
Using an old, rusted blade of folding pocket knife with one deer-horn handle-scale missing, the dark haired boy opened the hard shell clam, and sliced away parts of its tough muscular “foot”. He threaded this carefully onto one hook. On the other, he impaled a wiggling red and brown (polychaete) sandworm. In the painfull process the worm’s two pointed black, sharply curved pincers opened and closed—too close to the boy’s water wrinkled fingers—or so the boy thought.
The end of the twisted linen fish line was tied to a rusted spike, and then carefully laid out in coil-on-top-of-coil on the water smoothed black oak timber. Taking the baited line in hand and with a swing of an a boy’s arm and a flick of his sun tanned wrist the 2oz weight with its following line sailed gracefully out over the water to curve then splash down carrying the white lumps of baited hooks to sink through clear blue and green and disappear below the surface. Where unknown finny creatures—or so the boy thought— were sure to be. But at the surface—all that was visible now—was tiny patch of foam drifting down current where the taut line at the surface which created a wavy “v” ripple in the blue-green flood.
Held gently between wet and water wrinkled thumb and forefinger, the tight line trembled and vibrated as the 3oz lead rolled and bumped along on the pebble bottom. Then it held firm, perhaps wedged against a barnacled rock. The boy held the line taut and imagined his two baits, rigged well above the lead, swirling attractively—seductively—in the river current just above the waving sea laver weed coated bottom.
Was there a Black Sea Bass, a winter Flounder, or a Scup near-by? The fascination of fishing is that no one knows. The only information available to the fisherman (person) is unseen and comes only by way of tiny vibrations, minor tugs and bumps which must be interpreted by the feel in the hand.
Is that tug, the lead weight rolling down current, or a marauding Blue Claw or Calico crab? Will the lead hold the baits in place, just above the bottom? Or will the current drag it off in an upstream arc, into shallows? Will the baits hang on?
The boys knees pressed into the wood, and the the rising tide rose higher along the old sloping timbers. A Horse Fly landed on the boy’s arm attracted by bait scents and dampness— and began to bite. It elicited a sharp slap with the free hand..that missed the fly but rattled the hand.
Was that a little tug?
Then there was another..a little more distinct. Something was nibbling…mouthing the bait!
Did this require a full arm to jerk upward fast to set the hook?
Then a great pull…the line went alive! It slipped rapidly through the boy’s wet fingers—warming the skin. The boy’s hand jerked upward to set the hook—too late.
But his arm could rise only part way! Mid way upward a heavy weight on the end of the line prevented a full arc of the boy’s arm. Line streamed out of the hand, and the last few coils flew off the timbers.
The boy stood up, the line wrapped around his fist making white lines across the knuckles. The living, struggling weight opposed him— pulling the line upstream then down. Then just twenty feet away a fish splashed out of the water.
A sleek, blue sided fish….leaped from the surface, water streaming off its glistening sides and a red-shanked flounder hook hanging precariously from the side of its jaw, while a second one with a white chunk of clam bait rattled against its gill cover.
It dove once more and turned hard. The line slid through the boy’s hand…fast… then went limp.
The live weight was gone!
The boy sat down on the wet timber.
That was his first fish….there would be untold many more..some many times bigger, and in far off waters…but it was that, maybe six or eight pound blue fish which would never be caught or ever, ever be forgotten.
It’s memory remains as clear today as it was fifty years ago!
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