Bob Buscher expects to catch a thousand pounds of largemouth bass this year. That’s an unreal amount of fish caught one at a time, from a small boat by one fisherman. On a good year, Bob fishes about four days a week; some years he’s out there two hundred days. There’s no contest involved, that thousand pounds is a personal goal, which means he’ll reach it.
“I like this place, I might learn to surf,” Bob remembered thinking after U.R.I. shut down the wrestling program which brought him here from Westchester, New York as a scholarship athlete. He stayed, surfed, fished and happily lived in a rented waterfront house. “I could cast in the yard, right out, I would surf out off the backyard and the bluefish would come up in September and chase us out of the water.” When you’re young and onto something new, people in your circle can be a little skeptical. Some cousins told him he wasn’t living in reality. “Well, it’s kind of my reality,” Bob told them. Settling in so easily to such an unplanned life change now seems almost like the start of a love affair.
“I’m a trout fisherman,” he confirmed, extolling his passion like a badge. His father was a bow hunter, his uncle taught him to trout fish using salmon eggs for bait. He remembers fishing for big native brookies in streams that fed the Hudson and watching eels come up the same river. “I learned how to fish there by drifting an earthworm down the stream,” he said, with small hooks and a light drift. A simple start to a lifetime on the water. Later, his parents bought a place upstate, near a creek that fed the Esopus River, famed for its cold pools and fly fishing. “I came to Rhode Island and the streams were like swamps, there was no edge, they just flowed through the woods.”
That didn’t slow him from finding fish.
He took to commercial fishing on big draggers and the Oceana out of Pt. Judith for ten years. On the latter, they gill netted mainly for bluefish through the summer, in close and offshore. Bob began to understand rhythms and cycles. If stripers were on the beach, bluefish went deep. “If it was kind of calm,” he said, “bluefish were here and stripers were there,” he said, moving his arms east and west. Over time, he watched things change. “I was throwing away more than I could keep,” he said, expressing one of the great commercial fishing conundrums of our times. Freshwater fishing was something for relaxation, after fishing for work. Fishing for a check was increasingly frustrating, so he left the business in 2012.
Bob remembers weights and measurements like a scientist. He recalls a ten pound pike in Worden Pond caught ten years ago, a 6.42 pound bass landed in February, a 6.12 pounder he caught in 1991 to win the states in Bassin’ magazine, which landed him a fishing trip to fish in Florida. He caught a 19.4 pound pike in Hundred Acre pond then caught it again at 21.6 pounds then again at 22 pounds. He recognized its colors and particular white spot, because that’s what fishermen do, they observe and remember. In 1998, Bob caught a 6.6 pound and a 7.14 pound largemouth the same day and remembers each clearly.
“I push the envelope, I really enjoy fishing when no one else is out there,” he said. He understands success comes from being aware of everything, he pays attention to his surroundings, as the best fishermen do. “They’ll tell you what they want to eat,” he said, almost wistfully. Every time he mentions fish, he smiles. Every time.
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Bob Buscher smiles with yet another nice bass.
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