Imagine you’re in a Hell’s Bay skiff on flat, calm water. The sun is high, and shadows of darting fish are easily perceived along the sandy bottom, floating “with the current, unresisting,” as Hemingway famously wrote. But you’re not in the Florida Keys or the islands. And the fish are not bonefish or permit. They’re striped bass.
You stare to your right at a mansion on the hill, one of the dozens that dot the landscape around Gardiners Bay at the eastern end of Long Island, New York. This has been the land of the rich and famous since Capt. Kidd buried his gold on Gardiners Island in 1699. You’re at the end of Long Island. And you’re sight-fishing.
In the breakers below the mansion, a blonde surfer with years embedded on his face gives you a wave, catches a small swell, then carries the board up the path to the mansion, his mansion, just as that same surfer’s voice floats into your head singing “searching for my lost shaker of salt.” And before you can finish the chorus of “Margaritaville,” you hear a few curse words from your right as the greatest fly caster of all time, Bernard “Left y” Kreh, dumps his crab pattern in a mess after a gust from the south hits him in the face. You see Joe Blados having a chuckle with Nick Curcione two boats over. To the south, you see John Cole and Peter Matthiessen spot a fish, but they can’t hook up.
