Each fall, scores of anglers chase striped bass along the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic aboard a diverse armada of boats, from 50-foot convertibles working the steep rips off Nantucket, Montauk and Block Island to those fishing from center consoles, skiffs, aluminum boats and kayaks. In this excerpt from Seasons of the Striper, a new book from Rizzoli New York, author Bill Sisson describes an obsessive striper fisherman’s indoctrination into boats.
FRED THE LOBSTERMAN is standing aft in his wooden skiff, one hand holding the extended tiller, the other on his hip. Dressed in torn khaki pants, a short-sleeve shirt, and knee-high rubber boots, he pulls the pipe from his teeth and points to a distant buoy. He is lean and tanned and his arms are muscular from hand-hauling lobster traps on the shallow reefs off Watch Hill, Rhode Island. “Hold on now,” Fred said as we begin to swing east, moving over a reef. “Hold tight. It’s going to get bouncy.” His 18-foot lobster skiff is rough, worn, and powered by a smoky old Evinrude of maybe 50 horsepower. I am sitting on the forward bench seat, just a kid. This is my first-ever run onto the series of reefs. The water seems alive with small, standing waves, which buffet the flat-bottom skiff, shoving it around. I’m startled but not frightened. I lift myself off the seat with my
