By Jerry van de Sande
My last serious attempt to fish last year was Thanksgiving morning when Mike Comune and I lasted only 40 minutes in the cold at Monmouth beach. As the year wound down there were a few fish to be caught, but for the most part it was over. Time to reflect, time to review…. The Hot-Stove league of surf fishing had begun.
In conversation with Bobby Matthews the subject of fishing books came up. We agreed that there are few books about striped bass fishing especially those that focus on surf fishing for stripers. To narrow the discussion even further, we discussed books that talk about the fishing experience rather than the "how-to" aspect of fishing for stripers. Now that it is winter there is time and desire to reflect on what it is like and why some of us spend so much time and effort plying the waters for striped bass. So what are some of the books out there that talk about the experience of fishing for striped bass in the surf? Perhaps there are more than you might expect, and so I would like to list and do a mini-review of some of them although the list is much longer.
The all time classic for me has been the Frank Daignault (pronounced Day-Noh) book 20 Years on the Cape, which I will confess to having read at least 5 times in the last 10 years. It chronicles his family's experiences beginning in the 1960's fishing the Outer Cape, living on the beaches for the summers, raising a family of young fishermen that all contributed to the catch, and surviving on stripers during the years of top notch fishing into the late 1970's.
Recently Mr. Daignault went back into that special time again and covered in depth the human side of those years and did not limit himself to just the Outer Cape. The result was Eastern Tides that promises to be another repeat-read book. I promise to review it in depth next month.
Last year with my interest in Montauk being whetted, I read The Moon Pulled up an Acre of Bass by Peter Kaminsky. He Chronicles an October which he took off to fish the waters around Montauk with his fly rod. Yes it is about boat fishing with the fly rod, but it captures the magic of the Montauk blitzes during the magical month of October.
Bobby Matthews loaned me a copy of Stripers an Anglers Anthology edited by John Waldman. It is anthology of some of the best of the best who have written about the subject: Frank Daignault, John Cole (note his book Striper is a classic), Frank Woolner, Win Brooks to name a few. There is something for everybody who is interested in striper fishing in this book.
Finally, I would like to mention a book that is very difficult to obtain because it had only one print run and not many copies are around. Reading the Water by Robert Post focuses on Martha's Vinyard and does so through the eyes of 16 different fishermen who are and were considered the best in surf fishing on the "Vinyard". There is even a passing mention of our local expatriate Alan Cordts who lived in Spring Lake. This is another book that I have read at least 5 times, sometimes with a map in my hand to cross reference the places mentioned. Good luck in finding a copy.
