It was a rotten November afternoon, cold, windy, gray skies. The kinds of day when you want to put your head down and hurry home to get out of the elements. I was walking south along the railroad tracks that bordered the river and had about another mile or so to go before I would be home. As I approached the point where the tracks turned east, I noticed a small group of fishermen huddled out of the wind, by a shack that was standing (barely) on the shoreline of the lone jetty in that area. By today's standards, the jetty was insignificant, reaching perhaps one hundred feet into the river and I was subsequently to learn, only fishable on the outgoing and for a brief period on the incoming tide.
One of the guys was my new friend who had introduced me to conventional tackle, so I stopped over to say hello and more importantly to get out of the damn wind! When I got over to the spot, I noticed about six nice stripers lying on the ground. They had been taken a bit earlier from the jetty tip and these guys were just taking a smoke break between casts. As I stood there shooting the breeze, one of the guys went back out to the jetty tip and after a few casts was into a good fish. After a good run off he worked a nice bass of about twelve pounds up on the rocks. The lure, a white bucktail jig! In fact all of those fish had been taken on bucktail jigs. The most popular store bought jig at that time, (mid fifties) I think, was the Upperman bucktail. So for a few weeks that year until I learned a few shortcuts, I helped make Bill Upperman rich! After losing a dozen or so jigs I found out that the maintenance mechanic on the Railroad Bridge, sold unpainted jig heads for a nickel apiece. That was my salvation. With the purchase of a seven-foot glass Garcia and an Airex master reel, my budget was getting strained.
Over the course of the next few years, I learned the location of just about every jig eating rock in front of that jetty and the mouth of the Harlem River where it flowed into the Hudson. In retrospect, I also was becoming a one-technique fisherman. If I was taking fish, there was no reason to change, or so I thought. That was until my friend made the feature story in Outdoor Life Magazine!
The guys I was now fishing with were only too happy to share information on tackle and technique as long as the information related to something that I observed them doing and not other strategies that I hadn't witnessed. In one instance I found them throwing little wooden "sticks" which I honestly felt was a waste of time since we had been doing so well on jigs. Big mistake on my part, but I'll save that story for another time! The next lesson I learned in bass fishing 101 came when I received my copy of Outdoor Life magazine. The issue was for October 1967 and the feature cover story was entitled "Subway Stripers". Years later in a moment of nostalgia I purchased a copy from a dealer in old magazines, seven bucks, I can only guess what it's worth today! Anyway I quickly turned to the story and found the "usual suspects". There was Artie Williams, Tom, a New York city subway motorman, Barney McManus a stockbroker Louie a parks department worker and a few of the other" River Rats" as they were fondly called. This time the scene was slightly adjacent to the jetty, the time of year was early September and the time of day was late at night! The technique was totally different from anything I had seen or read about and the results were impressive, the pictures were of serious bass, one in particular stayed in my memory. It was held under the gill plate and was at belt level with the tail dragging on the ground! The strategy? Soft-shell crabs on a fish finder style rig, fished next to the jetty on an outgoing tide at night. The same approach used in daylight was occasionally effective but nowhere near as productive as the night version. When I met up with the guys, they told me that the "season" was pretty much over, not because the bass weren't there, rather the colder temperatures precluded their ability to buy soft-shell crabs. The fish they were taking were I think the advance guard of big fish returning from New England to the Hudson to winter over. Like many stories that make a national publication, this one resulted in a flurry of new faces in "our" fishing area. However since the article didn't pinpoint the location the newcomers dwindled as the weather got cooler and we went back to our bucktails. The following year, at their invitation, I purchased my softies and presented myself for some serious bass fishing. At this point in time I was married and a father of two children, had a "real" job and lived in New Jersey. By the time I had gotten home from work and done some household chores, I arrived at the spot well into the outgoing tide. About four of the guys were there and had racked up a rather impressive catch. As I had mentioned earlier in this report we were fishing next to railroad tracks. In addition, there was an above ground cable bank, which ran parallel to the tracks and carried cable for the railroad's signal system. The cable bank was about two feet across and there were about ten bass lying on the cable bank with their heads beyond one side and their tails hanging over the other side. While I managed a few small fish that night, I never came close to catching bass like those on that first night of soft-shell crabs 101! – to be continued
