Caught some fish
My first post-injury fish, three of them, finally
Some of the best advice I got after my brain injury was to do something new, that I’d never done before. Something I’d be able to do without comparing myself to pre-injury me. I started running. I never ran before this, and I’m still slow. Not as slow as I was. Speed aside, running has helped. I just got back from one, actually.
Fishing, on the other hand, is not something new. I fished a lot, fly fished very intensely for years before this. My intensity has waned in recovery, for a number of reasons. Fly casting is not as second-nature as it was. I can’t legally drive myself to fish, which is essential for fishing alone in good spots at the right times, often well after dark. Also, I need to sleep more now—for the benefit of my brain. Drinking sunset energy drinks and fishing the night shift is not a wise option. I do miss it, though.
You can imagine, then, my pleasure on Friday, 9/23, when I caught two personal best bluefish back to back, over ten pounds each, after catching my first fish since the accident—fittingly, a schoolie striped bass.
There were a few ways that fishing and catching those fish was a version of doing something new, per that good advice, but it was also familiar.
For example, it was familiar because I’ve known the people I fished with for years. One is a very close friend, at one point my housemate. The other person I went with once took me fishing at a special spot five years ago by night. I caught a great striped bass a little while back, fishing a spot at the hour he told me to, using a lure—I left the fly rod at home—he recommended.
The two of them know what happened to me, and know that I avidly fished—fished well, even—before this. A hospital employee told me early on that this injury would clarify who was truly with me. It means a lot knowing those two are in my corner at a time like this.
So in what ways was fishing “new?”
For one, it was my first time successfully fishing since the accident. The success was “new.” I’ve been out after fish my fair share of times—getting driven to do so, hobbling around, losing balance on a sandy hill, wading belly-button deep in moving water, feeling my right quad strain against strong current, trying my best—with no luck.
On that Friday, I got to feel some life on the other end of the line again, and not just for an instant. Fish have hit my fly, I even—very sadly—lost a fish once, next to a reliable jetty. I assume it was a striper based on where I was, the time of year, and how it hit the fly. It didn’t feel huge. Fish enough and you gain an understanding of how different fish hit.
It was also “new” to me because we were fishing with bait. I am a fly fisherman. I haven’t fished bait in years. If anything, catching these fish not on the fly after trying to get one on the fly for months is testament to how hard saltwater fly fishing is. I’m registered for a fishing tournament I’ve fished many times before—and the fish I caught would’ve put me on the daily leaderboard if I was registered not just for “fly.” I was not fly fishing, so they didn’t count. The tournament is no small deal. The first chapter of a book about it opens:
Grown men have cried over the derby. They have ignored their wives for week after week, sleepwalked through work day after work day, stayed up all night long, skipped out on their jobs altogether, drawn unemployment, burned through every last day of their vacation time, downed NoDoz and Red Bull and God knows what else.
I’m still glad to have caught those big fish, and can live with how they ended up. That said, it would’ve been nice to see my name on that tournament leaderboard.
Fly fishermen have a reputation as snobs. Nick Karas writes in The Complete Book of Striped Bass Fishing, “There’s no doubt that a few who wave the willowy wand may make a practice of looking down at surfcasters or plug tossers.”
I do not. The fisherman whose bait I was using is hands down a much better angler than I am. It takes decades of work to get that good. I have a great amount of respect for him. He is a guide. I’ve seen pictures of the fish he’s caught.
You can’t be a snob when you fish relatively often—still not as often as I used to—but haven’t caught a fish yet. I just wanted to catch one, especially at this point in time, when I’ve been preparing myself to live with a fishless 2022. Luckily, I won’t have to. I don’t normally use bait but it works, clearly, when paired with knowledge and experience. There’s no argument.
I’m glad there was no snobbery for me to overcome. It opened me up to catch fish by whatever means at a time when I needed to most.
Fishing that day was also “new” because we were shark fishing. I’ve never gone out specifically targeting sharks. Any fish I caught were technically bycatch. If something ran with the bait and then got off, the guy I was fishing with would inspect the marks on the bait from the hit. Sometimes he’d say “shark.”
I was thrilled to get my schoolie striped bass and those big blues, but he really wanted to put my friend and I on some sharks. We looked the part. I was fishing from a homemade fish fighting chair that was deftly welded to fit in a hitch receiver. We drove down the beach with me in that seat; it was a special experience. When my friend revealed that I ran a road race, the guy I was fishing with said he expected me to be in worse shape than I was and joked that he’d stop doing so much to help me. Yes, I can walk—run, sort of—but being helped was fun. Getting brought fishing with those guys was one of the kindest things anybody has done for me since this injury happened.
Part of the reason I hadn’t caught a fish until that Friday was admittedly because saltwater fly fishing—which I love to do, and stubbornly keep doing—is one of the most challenging, and sometimes least effective, fishing methods. Get a brain injury that compromises your right side’s capabilities, then try to fly cast a weighted streamer, righty. An already hard way to fish becomes even harder.
Its difficulty is one of the things I’ve always loved about fly fishing the saltwater. You work hard for everything you get. You have no choice but to cultivate the right knowledge—tide, moon, location, baitfish, the list is long—if you want to be remotely efficacious by pairing that knowledge with skill. The skill must be cultivated too, which is not easy. It took me a long time to get myself to where I was. Hopefully I can refer to it as where I “am” again. To boot, the hard part about the knowledge I have is that I know what used to feel easy, which no longer does.
To quote Karas again: “[Fly fishing for striped bass] can be the most frustrating of all the techniques, but when you do take a striped bass on a fly rod, you know there are few other methods with such great rewards.” Bluefish are also great on the fly. Every fly rod fish feels sweeter, but every fish feels sweet regardless, and I was in dire need of catching one. I’m fishing to recover and recovering to fish. Fortunately, thanks to help from the guys I was fishing with, I caught three—including two personal best bluefish.
The difficulty of saltwater fly fishing is also a sizable hurdle as I try to get back to doing it consistently and well. It’s almost October, so I’ll keep trying but I guess we’ll check in on my progress again come April. I feel more like myself when I fish, but I still don’t feel that I fish like myself. I’m a lesser version of the me I was. Old me would be driving himself to fish almost nightly, in a truck riddled with empty energy drink cans, with rods mounted on the hood, and a boat on my racks. Not yet. When I do feel I’m fishing like myself again—hence the great advice about doing a thing where you can’t compare your pre- and post-brain injury selves—I’m sure I will write about it here.
I wrote before about being unsure what I wanted to do with my first fish.
My first fish was a schoolie striped bass. I didn’t keep it. It felt right. First off, it would be too small to legally keep, and second, it’s a striped bass. Don’t eat it. Not while the stock assessment is grim. Plenty of fishermen will disagree with me, but I’ll die on this hill. The tournament I’m in is a striped bass and bluefish tournament, but stripers are rightfully ineligible for the contest this year. Bluefish, false albacore, and bonito only. A fish has to be weighed in to count, thus they die and are eaten—the fillets go to a good cause. Still, it is smart to give the population of bass a break.
It was fitting that the first fish I caught was a striper. I got to watch it swim off. I spent much of my time before this catching and releasing striped bass—not always but usually wading deep enough myself or holding the fish by the side of the boat so that I could unhook it without taking it out of the water. Fish handling was something I prioritized, still do, and while this bass was released perfectly fine it was admittedly harder to handle well when my right hand isn’t working right. My friend got the biggest bass of the day, about 40 inches, which he released and was too big to eat anyway. In Massachusetts, a striper has to be bigger than 28” but smaller than 35.”
The blues I caught will end up on the dinner table. That’s over 20 lbs of meat, waste not. I gave one to the friend I was fishing with who caught that big bass and a blue of his own. He loves to eat bluefish. He filleted and smoked the one I gave him, sent me a video of the meat coming apart, in a good way, instructing me to listen for the crunch. He also made smoked bluefish dip. I’m glad I was able to give him a fish. I wrote about him in an older draft—a draft I started before I caught these fish, which I’ll put up soon: “I’ve given him fish I caught in the past, but I still owe him. I will always feel like I do, he’s extremely selfless. I will give him fish even when I don’t owe him.”
One of the best things about fishing is that it can involve a whole group of people, not all of which are standing there holding a rod—though some are—and a whole list of activities beyond just catching fish.
It was a truly special day. My friend made bluefish dip. I love fishing because I love to fish, but I also love all that fishing brings about. It’s truly a way of life.
Eating fish aside, I’ve caught and released countless fish with friends, built strong relationships with a rod in hand. Now that I’ve broken my dry spell, I hope to catch more fish, release some, eat others, and enjoy all that fishing has to offer aside from casting and feeling a striper hit your fly. Hopefully at some point I’ll feel as if I’m fishing like myself again. I did not cry when I felt the weight of those fish on the rod, but I reserve the right to cry when I fish how I did before. Holding the bass and blues I got was a step in the right direction.
Congratulations, James. And your writing, as always , is first class. It brings the rest of us right into your experience. Keep them coming - the fish and the articles!...…. Ed
Fantastic news! So glad you've achieved another milestone on your recovery journey. Also glad you had a great day fishing!❤