Fish of a Lifetime

I grew up fishing. My father was a die hard fisherman. Every weekend, evenings in the summer after he came home from work, early in the morning. Whenever he could get out, he'd take us with him. My best memories are out on the boat with the whole family catching blue fish after blue fish.

The one fish that eluded my father was striped bass. He spent days and nights in search of this fish -- that in the early 70's had nearly been wiped out. We trolled, we used fresh bait, fresh bunker, every trick in the book. He never caught one. He caught his fair share of other fish. I have a huge Wahoo that was mounted that I watched him catch in Florida. And he'd go away and fish for Salmon in Canada and to the keys for bonefish with my mom.

I got the fishing gene. It is my favorite past time. I could be out on the water and not catch a thing and have a good day.

I broke the family striper curse about 7 years ago in Martha's Vineyard when we went out with a guide one early morning, and in a fog bound bay hooked into a mess of stripers. I called my brother who had just gotten a boat and told him that it was now his turn.

My brother has since caught stripers in the same fishing grounds that confounded my father. But until today, I'd never caught one in the Long Island Sound.

We got up early and left the dock about 6 am and by 6:30 were fishing off Rye Playland where a week before, my husband and friends pulled out a 40 pounder. Just after dropping our bait, my line took off. I jumped on the reel and brought in a beautiful striper. We continued for about 3 hours catching about 10 fish in all with my son pulling in the catch of the day at about 17-lbs.

A perfect morning, The sun not too hot, the water calm and the fish seemed to be everywhere. As we motored back to dock all I could think about was that I was a year older than my father when he died. And I wondered if perhaps he'd had just a little more time, he would have caught the one fish he had searched so hard to catch.