Now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big rivers alone…
Norman Maclean – A River Runs Through It
He sat with his back to me as I stood behind him with a clipper and cut his hair. His skin was paper thin, stretched tight over his bald head and mottled with age spots. With each pass of the cutter, wisps of white hair, thinner than 7X tippet, fell to the floor. As I cut and trimmed, we talked, and part of me reached back to times when I was in his seat and he was standing in my place. Back then, the Sears trimmer was fitted with what I called “the claw.” The claw was fixed over the cutter blades, assuring an even crew cut. The process was easy – move from the base of the head, up and over, like shearing a sheep. I remember the trimmer snagging and pulling my hair on occasion and I would wince with each pass. And then there was the smell of 3 in 1 oil and the itch of hair falling down my neck.
My Dad, like the rest of my family, was not a fisherman. But Dad had a supplier salesman in business who loved fishing. Mr. Meehan, if I remember his name correctly, loved saltwater fishing. He was raised somewhere in the Big Apple and at one time drove a cab. Later in life, he got into sales but retained his cab-driving tendencies when he drove us around on business trips. I remember two trips – one to Belmar, for albacore and bonito – the other way out to Montauk for blues and stripers. Both were productive, especially for a young boy. I could barely handle the fish, be it big blues or fast running tuna, but oh did it set the hook even deeper into a life already infused with fishing.
Later in my life, Dad still did not fish, but he did participate. He was there for me, in a word. There is a story told by educator and author, Stephen Covey, where he interviews a father, who in an effort to understand and get closer to his son, decided to take a month off of work one summer with the goal to attend every major league game the team played away from home. Beyond time, this took a lot of money and painstaking preparation. On hearing of this, Covey commented to the father, “you sure must like baseball,” to which the man replied, “no, but I love my son.”
During my college years, my father purchased a center console 21′ Proline with a 140 hp outboard. My parents had bought a place on Barnegat Bay, and the boat was a wonderful extension to that home by the bay. In it, we fished the tidal estuaries, the channels, the cuts and holes, and the inlet. When we fished it was all me – baiting Dad’s fluke rigs, setting him up, tirelessly instructing him on how to bottom bounce the rig. He never mastered that fine art, but somehow the fluke didn’t care, and I’d spend more time netting his fish, releasing them, and rebaiting or rigging than ever tending to my own line. Just the same, it was enjoyable time spent together.
With the years, age played its hand. Dad sold the boat as it became too much for him to handle alone, and my time in the Navy and a subsequent civilian job in Texas meant less time to visit. Kids came, responsibilities mounted, and summer days on the bay dwindled to holiday visits that were too short for any serious fishing, though we still would go.
Our last fishing trip together was in September of 2012. Dad was 83 then. I remember proposing the trip during a visit and as the words came, I automatically prepared myself for the normal response, an apologetic decline. But this time was different, a hesitant “yes.” “What time do we have to get up?’ came the question I knew was coming. Dad never liked getting up early. “The boat leaves at 7:30 but we’ll need to be there earlier to get a good spot on the rail. He sighed. “Ok, I’ll go…” he replied.
Dad did get up on time, though slowly. He could still walk but had to reply on props like countertops, tables and chair to get around. His balance had faded such that when he did walk, there was what us kids termed “the wing”, used as a counter to his stooping posture. We had collectively warned him in the prior years to get up and move, take a walk. The alternative, we insisted, would be a gradual decline in mobility, ending with a wheelchair.
We made our way out to Long Beach Island and turned left onto the boulevard that took us past the once quaint, now glamorous and overbuilt beach towns, starting humble but gaining with wealth-clad hubris along the way – Ship Bottom, Surf City, North Beach, Harvey Cedars, Loveladies, and finally Barnegat Light, where things turned back to a bit more of a blue-collar fishing town.
The boat we’d take, the Miss Barnegat Light, or the “Red Sled” to many who fished on her, sat stern-to at the dock, and the gangway was open. A few anglers had already taken up position along the rails, and we got ours – starboard quarter just where I liked it.
We got underway on time. The engines – twin Caterpillar turbocharged V-12 diesels, started with the deep roar of 2800 horsepower coming to life. We motored out of the slip and into the narrow channel that led up past more slips, a bait and gas station, the Coast Guard station, and finally Barnegat Light itself.
Dad always liked the ride out. It was a glorious morning – chilly enough to hint of the coming of Fall, the horizon rimmed in pre-dawn crimson. We huddled along with the other fishermen in the deckhouse. The air was filled with the optimism of fishermen. There is, I am convinced no greater hope in any gathering of human beings than this…
The trip out was a long one. We arrived at a patch of sea already populated with fishing boats. We motored slowly about in searching loops, the captain using his fish finder for something deep down – a lump, a mound, a distinguishing feature of the bottom. Fish are, after all, creatures aligned with structure. I once read of an experiment where bass were placed in a large glass tank of water, it’s bottom a white sheet, featureless and barren. The bass were observed to just swim around randomly. After some time, a different sheet was slid under the tank bottom – this time again white save a small black stripe. The bass were then observed to congregate around the black stripe. So, it is with fish.
We anchored up and with the boat’s horn as a signal, dropped our jigs down 90 feet, “baited” in hope. Jigging is a fun way to fish and when working a heavy jig deep, an exercise worthy of Popeye forearms. Soon enough rods could be seen doubled over with good bluefish in the 6 – 12 lb., range. The fish were ravenous. Yours truly started scoring as well…
The good fishing lasted well into the afternoon. Dad had a fine time, sitting near me, taking pictures, and soaking up the abundant sun, though he complained about his legs being sore from the rocking motion of the boat.
That was the last I fished with my dad. He passed away on May 9, 2022, not long after retiring for the night but not before having his daily martini, extra dry with an olive and on the rocks.
I still return to Barnegat, in late Spring to fly fish for stripers and blues, and then again in late Fall to try and catch the big striper migration south. Though my sister and her husband moved from Barnegat to a nice bayside home in Seaside Park about an hour away, it is different now, somehow lonely, as if my ties to this special place have worn and faded with time, the family cloth threadbare, a place first baptized with summer vacations, and then a place where my parents chose to retire to enjoy family gatherings, garnished with wonderful evening cocktails and bountiful seafood meals.
Now I fish alone and perhaps now too, I am haunted by waters…
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