The outer beaches of Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts are the last remnants of coastal wilderness in southern New England. The 33 miles between Nauset Inlet and Provincetown Harbor are an unbroken, sparsely developed sandy shoreline. It’s a wild place, unlike any other I fish.
As a striped bass surf fisherman, I only fish at night, and the dark, lonely stretches of beach are often eerie. The wildlife seems bigger and bolder; I’m speaking primarily of the creatures that live in the water, but four-legged ones, too. And the stripers I seek are savage, wild-eyed and supercharged. Some anglers attribute this to the colder, highly oxygenated water. While I won’t argue, I think it’s more than that. Out here, on this spit of land jutting 27 miles out to sea, stripers are on edge, on high alert, all the time. There is just no room for even minor mistakes out here — by fish or by fisherman.
Predator and Prey
A horde of schoolie stripers follows me relentlessly. I catch glimpses of them in the wash, lit by a dazzlingly bright full moon — flashes of chrome in the vodka-clear water. Every cast I make is met with the sharp tap-tap of them yanking at my lure only moments after it touches down. It’s entertaining enough for a half-hour but quickly loses its appeal as “dumb” fishing. There’s no skill involved; they’d throw themselves at anything.
So I wander, meandering Before long, I’m at least three miles from the buggy. I prospect frothy white water and jet-black troughs with a cast or two, covering ground, searching for greener pastures that hold cows. But it’s just schoolies everywhere. And seals: Clydesdale-size heads that pop up at intervals, accompanied by a loud whoosh of exhaled air. Sometimes they slide by so tightly to the beach that I glimpse their massive, black, torpedo-shaped shadows as they surf a wave, barely large enough to support their bulk.
