There are more than a few fish in my past that haunt me, here is but one. It was around 1993, on the east coast, western Long Island Sound, October. I had gotten into a nice groove of living like a Vampire as I was fishing for the fall Striped Bass run down the New England coast; fishing all night and sleeping all day, and living in my Plymouth Voyager. One night I was on the jetty wall between Sherwood Island and Burying Hill, at the mouth of the tidal creek, fishing the outgoing tide. At about 3 a.m. I got an enormous, heavy pull on my line, and the fish immediately ran down the rip, downcurrent out into the Sound. The fish was a heavy, bruising fighter that chugged it's mouth along the bottom, shaking the fly like a Bulldog, running about 100 yards, then easing up, I put the wood to em' and worked the fish back almost to my feet... ZZZOOOMMM!!! and away she ran again, (the really big ones are often hens), down the outgoing tidewater again, chugging and thrumming the fly and line, yanking like hell all the way, back out to the 100 yards mark again, and easing off again... I worked the fish back, pumping, winding, lifting, a constant moderate pressure all the while. This well might be the biggest fish I had ever caught and I was really wanting to get it in to see and release. Just as the fish got to within a dozen yards or so of me I felt a disheartening "PING!" as the line poped back slack a few feet, the hook was out and the fish was gone. I stared off into the blackness of night, out over the dark waters into an inscrutable void. I looked at my fly, the hook was almost straightened out completely.
I walked back to the van, tucked in my gear, warmed up a can of soup and pouted. It was almost 5 a.m. before I drove home in a distracted muddle of mental images. I knew I had not done anything especially wrong, that a fish can be lost even when we do it right... Yet still I doubted. I got home by six and went straight to bed, slept fitfully all day, and then got up about four in the efternoon. I began a new; I changed the flys and leader; I checked all of my knots right back to the spool; I checked all of the rod connections; checked the reel and seat, the drag etc, all of the guides... I filled the thermos and made sandwiches, loaded up the van and drove back to the shore an hour away. It was sunset by the time I got to the parking lot, a clear starry night of cool crisp air awaited me, there was a moon coming on, the water looked good. I took a walk, had some coffee and a sandwich, checked all of my gear again, and I waited. And I waited some more. By midnight I was fishing again, in the same exact spot as the night before. I knew it might be a few hours off, but you dont soon forget something like the last fish you caught, especially when it is that big and that tough. I fished into the small hours of the morning, half embarrassed at the idea of hoping to meet up with anything that good two nights in a row. But the fall Striper run there is only weeks long some years, and so when you know there are BIG fish around you shut up and you fish. By 3 a.m. I was feeling like a fool... But then I remembered that the tides advance by 50 minutes each day... At almost four I was so tired I was just lobbing the big white Deceiver fly out there into the darkness, "Cast and Hope" Joan Wulff called it.
And somewhere around four thirty a strange thing happened- the line yanked tight with a hard pop, and a big heavy pull drew my flyline out, down the creek, downtide, out into the darkness, headed toward the oyster stakes, and the big fish was solidly on, chugging and wallowing on the bottom, shaking the fly hard and running like hell...all the way out to the 100 yard mark. And once again I turned a big hard fish back as it eased, working it back in almost too my feet, only to have it run back out again, just as hard as the first run, just like the night before... Good God... It can't BE!... And so it went another time, another deep thrashing run, a few tail smashing breaks on the water lent an authority to this fish, it felt angry too. I finally got this fish back in, into the shallows and the wash at the bottom of the jetty wall in about three feet of water, and it popped off- just like the night before- and swam away, off into the night, out there beyond any hope I had of ever casting a fly, back to South Carolina or wherever they all go. I was in shock. It was as if the same fish had come back, thats how it felt anyway. I cranked the fly in and inspected it; there was a tiny patch of white meat attatched to the nearly straightened hook, just behind the barb. I pulled it off the hook and put it into my mouth, It was salty and sweet. "That is a hard way to eat a Striped Bass" I thought. I had some charts of Cape Hatteras in the van.