6:42 is sunset. For a few days this month we have sun and darkness in closely equal measures. Those late afternoon hours are for striper fishing through fall’s twilight, when animals of all species are restless and moving. Calm winds tempted me to fish along a hard coast towards a lighthouse but September salt ponds are safe, productive prospects to find bass seeking similar conditions. With an hour to prospect before night, I saw an opportunity.

Silversides swirled in warm bright shallow water as I unloaded my scratched, faded and much loved Eddyline kayak onto a narrow access. There are less sandy footprints from women and dogs now that summer has begun packing up her shoulder season bags. I make some first lines on the sand as the keel, patched with white gummy cement over gouges to discourage water from visiting, slides along a familiar eastward look. I spook an invasive submerged cormorant consuming more than necessary, which swims awkwardly away to a Maritime Skiff leashed to a sagging painter and mooring ball. While I regret their callous introduction, I accept its presence as a sign.

Racing tide, light and nervous energy, I launch, open an icy beverage and head for nervous water ahead. There is a hump just there, 50 yards off a dock, submerged, weedy, hidden from water skiers and speedy Whalers. In some last calendar months and smooth winter days, I have fooled bass there, big bass, bass longer, fatter and heavier than one might expect in 40° water when most of their kin have retired to southern rivers, free from ice and regulations to protect them. They are slow then, resting easy until spring’s longer days but today, I see, on my color machine, their presence. Still as winter now but this afternoon, I know they are not conserving, they are hunting. And I can see them.

None came after ten casts, my rule, so I paddle east now, where I see small circles, signs of hungry fish risking exposure. 71° water which was 67° days ago, is bright. Oily slicks bend towards all points, resisting small breezes and it is there, in level yellow light that I see the smallest pops of oval mouths rising and falling.

I almost missed them. They are small menhaden, schooling up on plankton so I cast to them, over them, away from them. It’s a cinder worm trick, crafted from years of rejection, that to be seen, you distinguish yourself by looking differently, heavier maybe, wounded perhaps, as an easy consumable but there are no bass beneath them and I move east again. My GPS shows hundreds of passes on this salty trade route; thin black screen lines are marker sized memories on a seven-inch canvas where black smudges a small screen. Now I see a familiar pattern of gray roughing up a piece of water off a point lit for ten minutes in amber and both are soon to vanish. It happens quickly, in no time, in real time, in time for me to accept that a bass passed under my boat, unconcerned with my false casting and supposed wisdom. Her swirl is small but tells the tale. Fish are here, in abundance, and tonight, I will work hard to catch them.

Fall twilight means early sunsets and hungry, quick stripers

I can see the sun has mostly departed and while my vest holds a radio for Red Sox games, this night they repeat too many recycled commercials to swap for the peace of a salt pond chorus with only one patron. There are no other boats now, there hardly ever are when I fish, by design, but I understand striper fishing through fall’s twilight also means I am not alone. Herons, osprey, oystercatchers, jays, bats and plovers allow me to share this night so I glide by with respectful distance and a nod to their ancient skills of being hidden in plain sight. I hear sucking sounds now, as bass open to inhale their prey. I hear more splashes and breaths. I have been a fisherman since my mother finally let me walk a Block Island dock alone. I have fished from here to there and back in waters fresh and stormy yet thankfully still thrive on this simple excitement of anticipation. It is waiting with hope, praying even, that graces me through the hard times of life off the water.

Around the corner, towards the gut, with my back to any last remnants of light, along a channel barely three feet deep on a decent flood tide, coasting along the edge of skinny sand flats, I cast to where I have tricked bass with light metals and bits of frozen squid. Three Octobers ago, I landed a bass a foot longer than legal there, twitching a thin imitation mackerel swimmer. In darkness, my video camera captured only deep gasps and joyful obscenities as I lifted a fish that laid over both sides of my Eddyline before a release sealed with a kiss. I find no fish but to my right, as is so often the case, darkness has called bass onto the flats and they are on fire. I cast akwardly over my shoulder in a vain attempt to recreate the keeper I caught in a cove a week prior. She was also feeding on silver menhaden but fell for a wobbly hunk of ivory colored plastic and I kept her. One striped bass per year to eat is my self-imposed limit. That decision is mine alone and I judge no one for their own choices. That’s how this country used to be. As that morning wore on, I looked at her, understanding the significance of removing even one fish from a crippled population while agreeing that I would use every inch of her, as an honest tribute to her significance.

The tide takes me slowly north. My eyes adjust to low light as the bottom to my right rises behind a parade of jumping silver fish, racing south from their peril and I see it and I cast to it and I have no luck because the bass don’t need me or my plastic foolishness. So I work to outthink them, only after I sit for minutes to watch the show, to inhale smells of split pine in backyard fires and wisps of hardwoods smoldering in woodstoves recently cleaned for winter. All of that feeds me, it affords me energy as I pause to sip a cold drink. It’s happening now, the show, the parade, the rise of hope and prayers on a cool September night which has energized all of me for fifty-three years. A Great blue heron shrieks with irritation, lumbering slightly above me, dipping briefly as if considering plucking off a few silversides from the shallows but it is late and time to tuck away, to be safe for the night. The absence of light has invited an abundance of fish. Darkness has changed my mission from fishing to hunting. I am close in spirit to those who seek elk, moose or high range sheep, who climb or stalk for hours, under clear skies with dark rains to the west, who understand the power of pausing, of being somewhere now, of seeing everything. Floating beneath charcoal shadows and a crescent moon, I am hunting perfect hunters.

Twilight’s charcoal shadows are my fall ranges

I hear Jerry Garcia singing, “Anyone who sweats like that…” so I work in circles, casting and popping, resisting decades of instructions to be patient. I understand what fleeing schools of bait sound like and I understand I am also surrounded. Everything is changing; autumn air is moving in beneath clear skies as autumn water moves out through a thin, rough channel where banks are dark rocks, the bottom is gravel washed of fines and the air remains fire pit pine but now with gas grill beef. Familiar roof lines and docks are now just shadows, ranges for me to judge my location. With two hours of tide to go, I am mindful of my position so as not to be pushed onto those rocks or forced through a gut of no return. My color machine, which I should not need but do lean on, shows inverted v’s taunting piles of menhaden. On the surface, I am alone, seeing bass pass me by, their lingering pudding swirls tell me I am not top of the food chain, that I am an old man in a narrow boat with a cool beverage and a failing plan, yet I am awash in fish and hope and remain tethered to each chance. I squint to see three groups of striped bass with lone agents all around push through two-foot-deep flats, running under cover, consuming while crashing, in quick flight to avoid detection and I am thirty yards shy.

Nothing is working. Line gets tangled around the tip of my American Beauty medium action rod, so carefully crafted by my dear friend Rosie, because I am growing impatient. Each time I swap lures with a new mission, braid pools at my feet. Feeling my self-imposed pressure, I expose a Cocahoe minnow to artificial light to cast shooting stars northeast, towards sounds of sucking, slurping and long bass slamming menhaden with their wide silver tails. I cast backwards again, over my shoulder, reliving some earlier success, as my forward short-sighted movements failed and a dark world exploded behind me. I switch lures again. Tight to the fast water, without fear she destroyed my four-inch plastic herring pattern diver with a wide, opaque lip three feet from rocks where I had cast countless times. She spun my kayak sideways and ran hard downstream for the sea. For fear of following her, I forced my paddle against my right shoulder, somehow held the rod and paddle with my right hand and muscled the paddle with my left, all to keep a fish on the line and stay in the pond. It was madness and exciting, painful and difficult. Reeling, paddling, inching south, hyperventilating like this was my first fish ever, I started to laugh. The five-minute nighttime battle was epic and when she came alongside, I could see her seven stripes, jagged in one place, her fan tail and her eyes. In still water, a few feet from someone’s empty dock, I measured her at 27” and every bit the greatest fish ever. Ten minutes later came the second fish, a sidewinder, a risk taker who left a pile of menhaden, succoming to curiosity, a 26” racer who got caught then was released without ever coming aboard. I see bass organized in their hunting, daring to push over sandy flats, pectoral fins level with the surface and I know they are hunting. I check the game, late in the eighth and as I know the pond intimately, as I do my Eddyline, finishing a warm drink, with two caught and released, I know it is time to paddle for home.

It was late when I glided to the beach in silence, then paused to stretch, to stand from a low kayak and repeat a sandy keel pattern. I have lived my life on the water, in various boats in various seas. I have struggled through health and for wealth and to understand why I don’t always understand fish but hauling my kayak onto the shore, in a rare bit of darkness along a shoreline fraught with gratuitous lighting, I am reminded of my place in all of this and how fortunate I am to be an old man in a narrow boat.