Millions of fish produced at Linesville State Fish Hatchery
Jared Sayers talks March 25, 2022, about the variety of fish that are raised at the Linesville State Fish Hatchery.
Brian Whipkey, Erie Times-News
In a previous life he’d been a dry fly snob who was decent at his game, and the thought of casting a treble-hooked plug at a fish was completely foreign and repugnant to him.
I told him I might be able to catch a keeper striper or two if he was interested in putting in the time.
We were an odd couple — I was a catch and fillet fisherman and he a fly fishing purist; our only commonality was a love of old wooden boats.
I can’t quite recall just how we arrived in the parking lot of Fort Adams State Park in Newport but I think our wives had something to do with our unlikely match-making.
On the 45-minute drive to Newport (I was towing a boat), we talked about fishing and how I found it inconceivable that someone who loved fishing as much as he obviously had not picked up a rod in five years. He was retired from teaching in a small western college and his wife finally convinced him to leave the woodland streams and rivers that he loved to move to her native New Hampshire. Love conquers or accedes all obstacles.
There were no fly rods, woven creels with leather trim, aged hats adorned with an assortment of flies or any type of clothing resembling Orvis or LL Bean catalogs. Just an open center console skiff with two trolling rods, four spinning and casting rods and several Plano tackle trays filled with tins, spoons and plugs of all sorts.
All of his previous fishing had been carried out on the banks of streams and rivers in scenic countrysides, not the blacktop, cement and multi-million dollar condos in full view of that Newport ramp and surrounding buildings.
I could tell he was happy to be on the water, but he felt out of place on the deck of a boat rather than the gravel and currents of a wooded stream in his favorite habitat. It took a while for him to get his sea legs, but as soon as I made the turn towards Brenton Reef, he perked up.
“We aren’t going in there are we? That looks pretty dangerous.”
I assured him it was dangerous for anyone who was unfamiliar with that type of water and that yes we were going in there. I watched his fingers tighten around the stainless steel grab rail on the console.
I’d fitted him with an automatic life vest, a unit that was foreign to an angler who seldom fished in water deeper than four feet and was wearing one myself as I slowed down and picked my way between the breaking reefs and the deeper gaps. I steered through until we were now behind the breakers and in a location that was ideal for ambush predators like the stripers that hid there and attacked prey that was washed around in the roiling backwashes and currents.
I offered him a spinning rod; he declined and informed me he would rather watch how it was done.
It was not my intention to scare him but to put us in a location where we could catch a few stripers.
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I would like to report I caught a striper on the first cast but that was not the case.
The water had been stirred up from a passing storm that went through two days before and the water had a lot of weed that was fouling my plug.
“There’s one right behind the plug. I can see the rise.”
He knew how to read water but, as he pointed that out, the fish were there and hungry but would not eat a lure with weed on the hooks.
We were in a large bowl inside the breakers and the rock formations of the shore when I moved to the east towards the lee and what looked like a piece of clean water.
The Danny Junior had hit the water and barely moved ten feet when a big maw opened up and crashed it.
I set the hook, and as the fish began taking line, I offered him the rod.
He declined, informing me that he needed both hands to hold on and just wanted to watch me fight the fish.
Keeping the fish from running between the boulders and the washes while maneuvering the boat inside the roiling waters was a chore, but I finally moved the fish up close enough to stick the gaff just ahead of the dorsal fin and haul it aboard. It was about a 15- or 18-pound striper, about 34 inches in length, with gleaming silver sides and dark black stripes, highlighted by the creases of sunlight just then breaking through the early morning cloud cover.
I can’t be sure, but I believe he winced when the gaff struck home. He was a light tackle enthusiast who, according to his wife, released all of his fish. She confided to us that after all his time, money, and effort he invested in his sport, it would be gratifying to have him bring home the occasional trout for dinner.
He was representative of a group of anglers who never killed a fish or took one home for the table. I left the fish on the deck, blood oozing from the gaff wound, and got us out of there before the tide dropped any further and created a heavier swell.
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Once outside the cauldron in much calmer water, I stopped to tend to the fish. I lifted it up and put it atop the ice in the big cooler in the bow, then took the serrated knife and severed the artery connecting the gills to allow the fish to bleed out, which provides the cleanest white of fillets. Fish that are not bled produce fillets or steaks that are blood stained.
I then moved along the Ocean Drive shoreline, pointing out the mansions and historic sights. I plugged up a few other fish, only one which had a hook fouled in its gills that I kept, yet my companion declined taking a rod and making a few casts.
He asked what the lines of big red barrels and flags were, and I informed him they were fish traps, or gill nets. He could not believe those methods of fish harvesting were legal or allowed.
There was a lot my reluctant deck mate did not understand about saltwater fishing, but in all fairness, that trip no doubt came as a shock to him.
After a few hours on the water, I could see that he was ready to get back on solid ground, so I pulled into the cove at Fort Adams and filleted both fish before hauling the boat on the trailer.
He offered to pay for the fuel and lunch. I told him the trip was on me, but lunch sounded great, although trailering a boat limited the number of restaurants we could park at.
We enjoyed a great meal and an enjoyable conversation at my friend Gary’s West Main Pizza, where I informed him that I’d been fly fishing for stripers for decades, before a painful fall out of a boat in a repair shop facility damaged my right shoulder, making it very painful to cast a flyrod for more than 15 minutes at a time.
He said he was grateful for the introduction to the ocean and the experience of chasing stripers in their gnarly habitat, but I never saw him again.
Later that fall, I received a thank you card with a photo of him posing along a New Hampshire river with a saltwater class flyrod while holding a school bass, which he assured me he immediately released.
I was happy to have introduced him to striper fishing and saltwater, but I don’t believe he would ever take another trip with a bloodthirsty bass assassin like me.
P.S.: Although his wife is working on him, she has still not tasted a fresh striped bass harvested by her husband.
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