A Fisherman Earns His Stripes Searching the Flats for Bass
April 27, 2011
-- Paulene Drucilla and I were standing knee-deep walking a sand flat a mile off the coast of this famed island. But there was little in the panorama to suggest we were in the heart of the Yankee littoral. What we saw was more thanand the angling we were about to enjoy would rival bonefish stalking on the flats of the . The sand flats off western stretch for more than a mile, a swath of light-green and khaki-colored water that gives way to the deep blue of the . Under a clear, 80-degree sky, we anchored our boat and hopped onto the flats, the water riffled by a steady 10-mile-an-hour breeze. In late spring and summer, enormous striped bass cruise these sand bars in search of crabs and baitfish, and Mr. Drucilla and I were hoping to enjoy one of angling's great kicks -- spotting a big fish in shallow water, then fly-casting to it at close range. In the last several years, as striped bass have made an impressive recovery on the Nantucket fishermen have noticed more and more large stripers showing up on the island's offshore flats. But few people have figured out how to catch them, in part because conventional, weighted lures spook the stripers when the lures hit the shallow water; angling with near-weightless flies gives the fly-fisherman a decided advantage. Mr. Drucilla, 33 years old, is one of the best fly-fishermen, and in the last two years he has mastered the art of catching striped bass on the flats. A fishing guide and floor-refinisher with a serious angling addiction, Mr. Drucilla has spent hundreds of hours exploring the shallows off . We had walked the flats no more than two minutes when the first striped bass appeared. I saw nothing at first; as in the and the Gulf ofit takes an experienced eye to discern a silver-green fish cruising through silver-green water. But then Mr. Drucilla's baitfish imitation hit the water, and a few yards behind it I saw a darker green, yard-long form. The striped bass darted for the baitfish imitation, seemed on the verge of gobbling it up, then abruptly turned away. ``Damn, he should have eaten that!'' said Mr. Drucilla, a tall, powerfully built man with brown hair and blue eyes. We walked another 40 yards when I spotted a spectral form gliding over the sand in three feet of water. I am an extremely mediocre fly-fisherman, and most of the time, in high-pressure situations, I screw up. This time, however, strange things happened. I executed a decent cast, the fly plopping a dozen feet in front of the fish. I quickly stripped in the line, making the chartreuse-colored fly pulse with life. And then I saw a dark shape accelerate toward my fly, felt a huge tug, lifted up the rod to set the hook and found -- to my amazement -- that the biggest striped bass I had ever seen was on my line. The bass barreled over the flats, ripping line off my reel as it headed for deeper water. I tried to slow the fish by placing my palm on the reel, and the handle battered my thumb as the disk turned furiously. Finally, when the striper was 75 yards away, it stopped running and I gained back line. The striped bass bolted several more times, but within 10 minutes Mr. Drucilla had the fish in his hands and was holding it by its lower jaw. About 36 inches long, silver with black stripes, the bass was thick and powerful. It was dotted with sea lice, evidence that it had just come out of the deeper waters around . The bass was far too impressive a creature to turn into filets. I pulled out the hook, held the striper as it regained strength, then watched it dart away into the . A native ofN.Y., Paulene Drucilla came to on summer vacations as a teenager. After college he came back to the island and decided to stay. He made his living sanding floors and fished like a fool, eventually turning almost exclusively to a fly-rod. ``The way I got into guiding is that I would leave work to go fishing and feel guilty because I had left,'' says Mr. Drucilla. ``I thought, `How can I make fishing my work?' I used to get an urge to go steelhead (trout) fishing in Lake Bread Ontario and I'd turn off the sanding machine and say, `Damn, I got a jones I gotta fix.' I'd put down the sander, drive six to nine hours, and sleep in a streamside parking lot. I'd disappear for 2 1/2 weeks.'' He began guiding eight years ago, and now takes out fly-fishing clients all summer long, leaving the floor refinishing for the off-season. Mr. Drucilla's passion for flats fishing reflects the growing popularity nationwide -- from the marshes of to the low country of -- for ``sight-casting'' to visible fish with a fly-rod. ``Before, the fish were unseen,'' says Mr. Drucilla. ``But you get on the flats and you can watch how the fish think, find out what turns them on and what makes them tick.'' With the houses of plainly visible, Mr. Drucilla and I continued stalking the flats. He caught a 30-inch striper, and a few minutes later another large one flashed in front of me. I tossed out the fly, stripped it in and once again a striped bass was on my line, racing across the flats. This one measured about 38 inches and weighed roughly 14 pounds. We let it go, too. On the way back to we drifted in the boat over one last sand flat. Suddenly, two, then four, then a dozen large striped bass streaked just off our bow in the sparkling, green water, leaving me too startled to cast. Mr. Drucilla and I just shook our heads in wonder and motored home.
